Recruit
by Evey Edge
Summary: Jacob Phelps returns to St. Regis campus while he recovers from a mission, where he encounters an unusual recruit named Elizabeth Scott. AU. Tom (Jacob)/Liz. Keen2.
1. Two Birds

If Jacob had to spend one more hour in his room, he was going to lose his mind. He'd almost prefer to be back in that Cape Town hellhole he'd recently escaped. Pain he could handle, boredom he could not.

Bud had brought Jacob back to campus to recover from the injuries he'd endured at the hands of the South Africans. They'd posed as potential new clients, but in reality they'd had a contract of their own with Bill McCready's name on it. Fortunately Bud had a policy of bringing security to meets with first-time customers, and Jacob had been there to get him out. It had been dicey, but he'd had gotten his mentor to the extraction point where Gina had been waiting. Jacob had been captured holding off the assassins and had spent three days in their not-so-gentle care before the team came to extract both him and one of the mercenaries. Jacob only wished he'd been conscious when his former captor was tortured for information about who'd put the hit on Bud.

He'd woken up in St. Regis' infirmary four weeks ago and had since been confined to the instructors' wing recovering from a multitude of injuries. All told he'd had bruised ribs, a cracked skull, ten broken fingers, twenty stitches in his leg, and a dislocated collarbone. The doctor recommended at least one more week of rest, but if Jacob didn't see something beside the four grey walls of his quarters he'd put a bullet in his skull.

The doctor had finally seen fit to remove the splints from his fingers, as so he could finally hit the heavy bag. Jacob glanced at the clock. Students would be in classes, so the room should be open.

Ten minutes later Jacob was entering the large building housing the dojo and gym. He could hear the sounds of a martial arts classes underway. It was hard to believe it had only been six years since he'd been a student. It felt much longer. As he was approaching the door to the dojo he caught a snatch of conversation.

"-when the hell is she going do it?"

"Any minute now." He stopped. From the sound of it the speakers were a couple of females, probably grabbing a drink at the water cooler near the door. No doubt they expected the sounds of the fighting to provide adequate noise cover for anyone else inside the dojo. Apparently they hadn't thought to check the hallway. Stupid.

"We should have turned her in."

"No. This was the smart play: two birds eliminated with one stone. Can't be tied to us." Jacob moved into the doorway and the two recruits blanched.

"Actually it can. I suggest someone start talking now." One of the girls opened her mouth, only to be cut off by a whistle. Jacob turned and saw the instructor marching toward him. He immediately recognised the man as Tyler Morris. He'd been a mediocre student in Jacob's graduating class. If memory served, Morris had barely made it through the program. Bud must have been an advocate of the "those who can't do, teach" philosophy.

"What the hell, Phelps? I'm running a class here." Jacob ignored Morris and turned back to the girls he had overheard. Their eyes both darted to a pretty brunette standing about fifteen feet behind Morris. He looked intently at the girl, whose expression had grown dark with anger. Suddenly, as if she'd procured it by magic, there was something in her right hand. The girl charged at Morris.

"Knife!" Morris moved just in time to avoid being stabbed in the neck by the recruit's shiv. Undeterred, she swiped for him again. Morris leapt back to avoid her blade and kicked it out of her hand. Morris threw a combination punch, on fain to the right and a jab to the left that caught her squarely on the nose, which broke with a cracked. The recruit retreated a few steps, involuntary tears streaming from her eyes, and blood coming from her nose.

Morris swung again, but this time the girl ducked and swung a punch of her own into his ribs. He stumbled back and in a fluid move the girl swiped his legs out from under him. She aimed a hard stomp on his crotch, but Morris caught her leg and yanked her down beside him. He attempt to mount her, but she grabbed his shoulders and used his momentum to flip them both, until she was on top of him. The recruit landed two solid hits to the face before grabbing Morris' throat and squeezing. The man's eyes became wide and desperate as he flailed trying to get free, but the recruit's pin held. A few more seconds and the girl would kill him. Jacob was tempted to let her, this was after all not his problem. On the other hand the girl definitely had skill, and while Morris would be no great loss, squandering her potential would be a waste.

Jacob ran up from behind the girl and snaked his good arm around her throat. He squeezed and her hands instinctively released Morris and gripped his arm. He allowed himself to fall backward yanking with him. Morris' would-be killer twisted in Jacob's arms as he pulled her into chest. Jacob put his head next to her ear.

"Try anything and I will snap your neck, understand?" After a beat her head bobbed in a nod and he loosened his hold on her slightly so she would be able to breath. Jacob looked around at the teenage bystanders, "Class dismissed." The recruits filed out of the dojo, casting a backward glance or two at their retrained classmate. Morris angrily pushed himself to his feet and stepped toward Jacob and his captive. "You too, Morris."

"Are you kidding me? The bitch just-"

"What happens to her is McCready's call, not yours. If I was you, I be less worried about her punishment and more worried about the fact a recruit got the drop on you. It's the kind of thing that might make McCready wonder if you're really cut out to be a member of his organization. Now get out." After shooting dual dark looks to Jacob and the girl, Morris stalked out of the room. Once he was out of sight Jacob removed his arm from the girl's throat and stood up.

"You're welcome." The recruit remained on the mat, wiping blood from her nose, and not even bothering to acknowledge him with a look.

"For what?"

"For saving your life. If I'd let you kill him, McCready would have had no choice but to put you down." This way she actually stood a chance of surviving. Attempted murder of an instructor was pretty damn serious, but if Bud saw enough future earning potential he might be lenient. The girl scoffed at the suggestion that he deserved her gratitude.

"You should have let me finish him." Jacob cocked his head to the side, trying to understand her words. Clearly the murder attempt had been premeditated. The girl knew the rules; she knew that killing Morris like this would result in her own death. Was that all this had been: an attempted suicide by proxy?

"You wanted to die?" The recruit pursed her lips and glanced away. After ten seconds she turned back to him and he saw the saw the same fury in her eyes he'd seen during the fight.

"I wanted him not to live." There was something arresting about her eyes. The passion in them was...unusual. Wrong. Not something he expected to see from a St. Regis student. It disturbed him and yet he couldn't look away.

"Scott, You're coming with us." Jacob turned to the pair of guards who had appeared in the doorway.

"Guess I'm going to the principal's office. Wish me luck." The girl, Scott, popped up off the ground and sauntered over to the men, knowing full well they could be taking her to her execution. Jacob had to credit her with balls.

When she'd gone he scanned the empty dojo and his eyes fell on the weapon Scott had managed to smuggle in. It was a plastic shank, the kind you might find in a prison, which in some ways the school was. The instructors and guards were very careful not to give the recruits weapons while they weren't supervised. Just the act of making the shiv was a risk. It would have taken time and patience. Jacob picked up the weapon, turning it over in his hands.

Jacob recalled the conversation he'd overheard. The two other recruits had known what Scott was planning and had agreed to stay silent. The girl said, "Two birds with one stone." If Scott had succeeded she and Morris would both be dead. They'd wanted both their fellow recruit and instructor eliminated. The question was, why?


	2. Complicated

Jacob stalked the hallways of the recruit quarters until he caught sight of one of his targets.

"Hey." The girl looked up at the sound of his voice and for a second he thought she would try and bolt. "Got a minute?" She nodded and motioned him to follow her into her room. The second girl from this morning was inside, sitting on the one of the two twin beds. She jumped to her feet when she saw him enter. Both recruits gazed at him warily.

"Hello, again. You want to tell me what the hell was going back there? And before you follow your natural impulse to lie, try to remember I overheard your little conversation by the water cooler. You had prior knowledge of your instructor's premeditated murder and you didn't report it. That makes you both complicit. As of this moment the only three people who know that are in this room. You answer my questions, honestly, and that's the way it stays." The girls exchanged a glance and the smaller of the two nodded. The blonde turned to address Jacob.

"All we did was help her gather the plastic for the shiv." So Scott had recruited these two to help her assemble the murder weapon. That made sense. Having multiple people stealing the material reduced the chances of getting caught, provided she could trust they wouldn't turn her in.

"Why do the three of you want Morris dead?" The darker girl spoke this time, her expression grim.

"Morris is a perv. He tells female recruits that if they sleep with him he'll boost their ranking, and keep them from being cut. If they say no suddenly their grades start dropping in his class." Jacob blinked. There wasn't much that unsettled him, but this struck closer to home than he'd like.

A year before McCready had found him he'd been living in a group home. There'd been a older girl, Angela, who'd looked out for him. On the days he'd been sent to school without food, she'd given him half her lunch. On the nights when their foster father had come home drunk and angry, she'd hidden him in her room. On one of those nights he'd been in her closet, and their foster father had come in and he'd...hurt her. Jacob hadn't moved. He hadn't done anything. The next morning the girl told him she was fine, that it had been happening for a while and she could handle it. About a month later Angela killed herself. Jacob had run away about a week after that.

"So he's done this to the three of you?" There was an unspoken understanding that recruits deal with their own problems at St. Regis. There were penalties, of course, but unofficially Bud rewarded students who demonstrated they had the initiative and intelligence to defend themselves. If Scott had been assaulted, Jacob doubted Bud would penalize her too harshly. He was surprised when the blonde shook her head.

"No, not Scott. She's top bitch around here. Morris only targets mid-rankers like us."

"Then why did Scott go after him?" The girls both shrugged.

"I don't know. The girl's nuts. We figured if she wanted to go all kamikaze on Morris, fine by us." Jacob nodded. Their lack of interest in Scott's motives made sense. If Scott was top of the class, then it was likely they considered her as much of a threat as Morris. If she was put down, then their ranking would automatically rise. If there was one thing that was universal at St. Regis, it was a strong sense of self-preservation. All the students were survivors. Or they were supposed to be.

Jacob made his way across campus, his mind turning over and over the puzzle that was Scott. Why would a top ranking student sign her own death warrant by killing someone who was in no way a threat to her? More importantly, why did he care? He was a full agent now, and had been for years. Whatever this little academy drama was, it had nothing to do with him. In a week or two he'd be back in the field, wearing a new name, fulfilling a new contract. He should just drop it, go work a heavy bag and leave Bud to deal with the situation. The trouble was, he didn't want to. Maybe it was the weeks of boredom, maybe it was his disgust for Morris, or maybe it was just that he found Scott so damn unusual. Whatever the reason, something was compelling him to see this through to its conclusion, propelling his feet to the building containing the holding cells.

A fingerprint scan and elevator ride later Jacob was facing two black-shirted guards.

"I want to talk to her." The guards turned and smirked at one another before turning back to Jacob.

"Is that right? Well, Golden boy, protocol says we hold her until McCready gets back." Jacob resisted the break the guards nose. He hated dealing with the campus security. They were the absolute bottom tier of academy students who had survived their training and as a result they were invariably difficult. The used whatever limited power they had to screw with high-ranking recruits. Jacob had experienced back in the day, and now it seemed it was deja vu all over again.

"I'm not asking you to let her out, I'm asking you to let me in. McCready will want a full briefing when he gets back. He's not going to be in the mood to conduct the interviews himself. You want to be the one to tell him this bullshit hasn't been taken care of?" Invoking Bud's name did the trick. The perception that he had the boss' ear could be pretty useful at times. The metal door swung open, revealing Scott sitting cross legged on the cell's cement floor. Her eyes, which had been closed, popped open when he entered the room.

"You again."

"Me again." Jacob's eyes swept the empty cement room. He'd been here once before, after he'd broken into a fellow student's room and busted both his knee caps. He'd ended up doing a month in the hole, but when he'd emerged no other student had dared fuck with him again. There were still no cameras, nothing that could be destroyed or used by the cell's occupant. He could speak to Scott with no fear of being recorded.

"I heard some interesting things about you from the guards." So the idiots outside were prone to gossip were they? Not surprising. "Apparently you're some kind of living legend. Youngest recruit to graduate in three decades. McCready's favorite." Jacob got the distinct impression that despite Scott's words, she wasn't remotely impressed. In fact, her tone was almost contemptuous.

"McCready doesn't have favorites." A lie and one that Scott wasn't fooled by. She rolled her expressive blue eyes at him, something that no one who knew his real identity had done in a long time.

"I know. Daddy loves his recruits all equally. Which is to say, not at all." The contempt that had been a mere undercurrent in her voice was now unmistakable. This girl definitely had some issues with Bud.

"You know I heard some interesting things about you too." Scott actually chuckled and shot Jacob a playful grin.

"Let me guess: I'm a crazy bitch?" Apparently the girl was well-acquainted with her reputation.

"More or less. I heard you went after Morris because he was pressuring other recruits into sleeping with him. Other recruits, but not you." Scott's smile fell from her face.

"Was there a question in there?"

"Why were you willing to die for those girls? They knew you'd be killed if you succeeded. They didn't care." Was Scott acting out of some kind of misplaced sense of loyalty? It was hard to imagine that a top ranking student would be that stupid.

"When I first here I had a roommate, Elena. I came back to the room one day and I found her with Morris. She told me not to say anything because she wasn't doing well and cuts were coming up. She was convinced Morris would save her. He didn't. She's dead and he just moved on to the next girl down the list. He wasn't going to stop. Someone had to do something." Jacob's mind flashed back to the night in Angela's room. He hadn't done anything, not then, and not after either. He forced his mind back to the present. What happened wasn't on him. It wasn't his job to do something.

"Why you?"

"My father used to say, 'If not now, then when? If not you, then who?' He believed if you had the power to help and you didn't it, then what happened to him was on you. I didn't help Elena. That was on me." Jacob looked into Scott's eyes and read completely sincerity. It was moral claptrap that "normal" people spouted, but Jacob had never in his life come across someone who actually put it into practice. Before today he would have sworn such people didn't exist outside fairytales, and if they did he'd have said St. Regis was the last place on earth he'd ever find one. Yet here Scott was.

"Why are you telling me this?" She was smart, she had to know what Bud would do to her if he suspected she had this kind of internal weakness.

"Maybe I'm just a sucker for a pretty face." Scott leaned back against the concrete wall and closed her eyes. She was apparently done talking to him. Well, that was unfortunate because he was not yet done with her.

"You want me to tell McCready. You're still hoping he kills you." What was this girl's deal? She was the top of her class, and that didn't happen without effort. If she really was suicidal the easiest path would have been to simply fail out.

"You asked me before if I wanted to die. I don't, but I'm not sure I can live with who'd I need to become to survive this." Jacob suddenly understood. Scott had said she'd been at St. Regis for over a year, which meant she was year 2. Her class was three months away from graduation. The final exam was always a kill mission. That's what she was hoping to avoid.

Scott was complicated. Clearly she had natural ability in abundance. Her plan to take out Morris showed intelligence, courage, and a willingness to do whatever it took to achieve her objective. On the other hand she was flawed, infected with some morality bullshit. She feared becoming "bad". It was as though two halves of herself were making war on one another. So what was Jacob going to do about it?

"If I was you, I'd get real sure, real fast." Jacob removed the small shiv from his pocket and tossed it to the floor in front of Scott. Her eyes opened at the sound of plastic hitting cement. She looked at the weapon and back at him. "McCready will be back tonight for your hearing. I strongly suspect Morris will attempt to get to you before then. Decide if you want to live or if you want to die. Either way the choice is yours."

Jacob turned and walked out of the cell without a backward glance. He given her a chance to survive. The rest would be up to her.


	3. Choices

Liz turned the make-shift knife over in her hands, and wondered for what felt like the thousandth time how the hell she gotten here. Three years ago she'd been happy, she'd had a future, a life. Now she was sitting in a concrete box, waiting for a man to come kill her, and trying to decide if she even wanted to stop him.

She wondered if the police were still looking for her. Probably not. Liz had a feeling McCready paid to have the files on his students erased from the databases and everyone who'd ever cared about her was gone. An image of Aunt June flashed through her mind, bringing with it the familiar rush of pain. Liz thought back to the night she'd last seen her aunt. They'd been arguing about Frank and Liz's sneaking out and Liz had just lost it. She'd told her aunt that now that Sam was dead, they weren't family anymore. That was the final thing she'd said to the last person in the world who'd given a damn about her.

Liz had left the house that night with Frank and that had been the beginning of the end. They'd made their way grifting, pick-pocketing, and stealing cars until one day their luck had run out. The old cocktail of pain, guilt, rage, and self-disgust ate at her gut like a tumor. Who was she kidding, wondering what had gotten her here? There were plenty of people she could blame if she wanted to, but ultimately it was her dumb fucking choices that had landed her in this cell. Choices. Funny, that had been the last thing that guy had said to her, that whether she lived or died was her choice. Phelps. Morris had called him 'Phelps'.

According to the guards he was a big damned deal around here. McCready's prized pupil, so they said. Liz had heard a rumor a few weeks back about some super hot operative recovering the the infirmary. 'Sex on a stick' had been the phrasing the girl had used. She hadn't been wrong. Short dark hair, piercing blue eyes, strong jaw, and the body of an Adonis. Liz wondered what he looked liked when he smiled. If he smiled, she should say, because super-assassins probably didn't. No matter how tempting the outer shell looked, the inside was hollow.

Liz had been at St. Regis long enough to know that every student, every guard, every instructor, was broken in some way. They taught classes here on how to mimic emotion. Liz had had no difficulty, but as she'd looked around at her classmates, she'd seen that it wasn't that they were struggling to reproduce a familiar response on command. They had never experienced what they were attempting to project before. In that moment Liz had realized she was a dolphin in a room full of sharks. Phelps was McCready's star student, so Liz had to assume he was just as cold-blooded as the rest of the them.

Her mission to rid the world of a piece of shit rapist had been foiled by the handsome sociopath, who apparently had been passing the room at the wrong moment. As if Liz had needed another sign that the universe hated her. After that she had been perfectly willing to give up. When Phelps had come to question her, she'd told him everything. She hadn't hid who she was. She'd assumed he'd scurry back to his master like a good dog and report her "weakness". Maybe he still would, but if that had been his plan, why had he given her the knife? Why had he helped her? None of it made any sense.

Suddenly the door to the cell swung open. Liz quickly concealed the weapon inside the sleeve of her shirt. Morris stepped into her cell, his hands clasped behind his back, wearing the most pleasant expression she ever seen cross his face. The door locked behind him with an ominous click.

"Hello, Scott. Enjoying solitary?" Liz shrugged and slowly got to her feet, matching his insincere smile with one of her own.

"Well, I haven't had to look at your ugly face for hours, so yeah. How about you? Looking forward to telling McCready about getting your ass kicked by a girl? I know I sure am."

"Oh, you won't be telling McCready anything at all." Morris suddenly brought his right arm up from behind his back. Two taser wires flew at her and the next second she was on the ground in intense pain, jerking uncontrollably. She didn't know how long she convulsed before the pain suddenly stopped. "Like my new toy? It's specially modified. Gives a little more umph than your standard issue taser. Also there's no limit on the cycle, so I can keep this going for as long as I want." Pain erupted again, and it like being hit on every part of her body all at once. "The thing is Scott, you're suicidal. Your little stunt today proved that. Maybe you snapped under the pressure, maybe you were always a little nuts. Who knows? Who cares? The point is: nobody is going to be surprised when they find you in here with your head bashed in from repeatedly running into the wall. Don't worry, I'll help you with that later...but first, what do you say we send you out with a bang?" The pain was suddenly gone, allowing Liz to focus on what Morris had said.

"Fuck you." Morris laughed, seemingly delighted by her response.

"Yes, that would be the idea." He squeezed the trigger and agony once again shot through her limbs. Block it out. Focus. Liz had the knife, she just had to get close enough to use it. Her body suddenly stopped shaking, but her stomach felt like it was going to heave. She had exactly one choice, and it was not a good one.

"What do you say Scott? Reconsidered?" Not trusting herself to speak, Liz just nodded weakly.

"That's what I thought." Morris flipped her roughly onto her back and yanked the wires loose. Suddenly his whole weight was on top of her, his face leering over her.

"Hands over your head." Liz complied, keeping her palms down and her wrist facing the floor in order to conceal the shiv she was working up from her sleeve. She crossed her left wrist over her right, so when Morris reached up with one of his hand to secure her arms, his hand only got part of the way round her dominant wrist. In a distant part of her mind, the part desperately trying to ignore the hand currently pushing down her sweatpants, she noted that an operative really should have known better. Clearly he wasn't thinking with his brain at the moment. "You're no different from every other little slut who-." Liz had no idea what Morris had planned to say next, and with a plastic shiv protruding from his carotid artery, she doubted Morris knew himself. With a strong yank, Liz jerked the weapon out of his neck, causing blood to spurt across her face. Watching Morris struggling to stem the bleeding Liz was shocked with with how little she cared. Quite the opposite, she actually felt a rush of savage satisfaction. Her only regret as he gasped his last breath was that she'd allowed him to die on top of her. The man had to be 190 pounds at least.

She was just starting to shift the dead weight of her attacker when she heard the door to the cell open. She grabbed the shiv just as Phelps entered the room with his gun drawn. He took in the sight of Morris's body, and Liz pinned beneath him, shiv at the ready, before lowering his weapon.

"I guess the cavalry did not arrive in the nick of time. Sorry." Liz blinked twice. He had come to help her? Unreal. She was tempted to wonder if she was hallucinating. Was that a side effect of being repeated tased? Liz couldn't remember.

"Make yourself useful and get this asshole off me, would you?" Phelps' response to her rather surly command was to treat her to the most adorable half smile she had ever seen. Yes, she was definitely hallucinating.

"Yes, Ma'am." Once Morris was no longer pinning Liz, she was able to sit up, although she immediately regretted the attempt. Every muscle of her body hurt.

She avoided eye contact as she pulled up her pants. That had been far too close. Liz grabbed the bottomed of her shirt and used it to clean away the blood on her face. Damn, could she use a shower. "You okay?" Liz looked up at her would-be rescuer to see if he was kidding.

"Well let me see...I was just repeated electrocuted with with an illegally modified taser and nearly raped by a psychopath. I stabbed said psycho in the carotid and he bled out all over my face. Other than that, I'm good." Phelps smiled again, and Liz's pulse raced in a way that had nothing to do with the electricity that had been running through her a few minutes earlier. It was particularly bizarre, given what she'd just narrowly avoided.

"Mentality acuity seems intact, but we should get you over to the infirmary." Was he serious? Liz couldn't resist rolling her eyes.

"Yeah right, let me just ask the guards, who just let Morris in here to kill me, if they'll give me a pass." Phelps shook his head and extended his hand. After a moment's hesitation Liz took it and let him pull her up. His hand was warm and strong. Safe. Liz mentally slapped herself for that last thought. Safe? The man was a damned spy/assassin. Safe was the absolutely last thing he was.

"The guards have been permanently relieved of their duty." He led her out the cell door and Liz was surprised to see both of the guards lying on the floor with bullet holes in their skulls. Yeah, 'safe' had been a good work to describe this guy. "I contacted McCready a couple of hours ago, gave him the broad strokes of the situation, and told him what I suspected Morris would try. In the event it came to pass, he gave me the authority to intervene." Strangely Liz wasn't upset by the sight of the guards, nor the fact that her escort across a deserted campus had killed them. Maybe she did belong in this place after all.

"So...what's going to happen to his body?" Liz regretted the words as soon as they popped out of her mouth. She couldn't believe she was making the equivalent of assassin small talk.

"Cleaners will take care of it. Unless you wanted to take trophy or something. Cut off his dick, mount it, display it on your dresser." Liz stopped in the middle of the path and stared at Phelps, who held his straight face for about two seconds before he started to laugh. "I'm sorry. Your expression was just-" He continued to laugh and before Liz knew it she was right there with him. She had no idea why. It was the grossest, most insensitive thing she had ever heard in her life and yet, she couldn't stop the guffaws bursting from her. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed this hard. Not since her father had died. The thought was sobering enough to bring her mirth to its conclusion.

They walked the rest of the way to the infirmary in a comfortable silence. When they reached the door, Phelps turned to face her.

"So what's verdict. Do you think you're going live?" Liz knew he wasn't asking about the injuries she'd sustained during the attack. Liz thought back to how she'd felt when Morris had come at her. Giving in would have been an easy thing, ending the pain, the struggle, but she'd fought to survive. Liz remembered the satisfaction she'd felt in stopping him. The chance to stop others like him, maybe that was worth living for.

"Yeah. I think so." The smiled she received for her answer made her wonder, just for a moment, if maybe there wasn't something else worth living for.

"Good. Night, Scott." He'd made it about three steps towards the faculty dorms before she called out to him.

"Phelps? Thanks." He nodded and then continued on his way. Liz watched him for a few seconds before turning and heading into the infirmary. She really needed to get some rest.


	4. Debrief

Jacob had made it all the way back to his room, and into his pajamas before his phone had buzzed. McCready apparently wasn't interested in waiting until morning for the debrief. Jacob dressed as swiftly as he could. Bud had not been pleased when Jacob had called him earlier that day. The fact that Jacob's mentor had acceded to his request on how to handle the situation didn't mean Jacob wasn't about to get ripped a new asshole.

As Jacob made his way across campus he mentally reviewed all the ways this had not been his fault. Scott's original assassination attempt was not on him, and it was only pure dumb luck that had allowed him to prevent it. The fact that Morris had been assaulting the recruits was not on him. If anything that was on Bud for putting a sexual predator in a position of authority over teenage girls. The guards likewise were not his fault. Placing a pair of bitter sub-par agents in charge of securing a recruit like Scott had had disaster written all over it. Jacob hadn't been remotely shocked when they'd taken Morris' bribe, in fact he'd anticipated it. That was why he'd called Bud in the first place.

Jacob had predicted that Morris would attempt to kill Scott. He'd known that Morris would need to either bribe or eliminate the guards at the door to her cell. Bud had given Jacob the directive to monitor the situation from the building's security room and intervene only if Morris was successful in gaining access to the cell.

He'd had hours of time to wait and think about the small weapon he'd given Scott to defend herself with. He'd had no idea if it would be enough. He'd seen Scott take Morris down in a fair fight, but in this school nobody was trained to fight fair.

The probabilities had lay with Morris trying to stage a suicide, because that was Morris' only way out of the inquiry. The other girls hadn't come forward, and Morris had had no idea Jacob was onto to him. If Scott had "taken her own life", Morris could have spun whatever story he'd liked. In order to keep with that narrative Morris would have limited choices when it came to weapons. Guns art the very least were out of the equation. Jacob had hoped that would even the odds between them.

Jacob had watched as Morris had strode down the hall to the cells as if he hadn't a care in the world. He'd been empty handed, but Morris' jacket had made it impossible to determine if he'd concealed any weapons. It wasn't until the guards had stepped aside that Morris had removed the taser from the back of his jeans.

The elevator ride down to the cells had felt absurdly long. As he'd descended Jacob's mind had fixated on Scott, on whether or not he'd reach her in time. It had been a real life example of Schrodinger's cat. In those few long minutes it had taken for Jacob to reach the cells and dispose of the guards, Scott had been both alive and dead to him. An odd thought had struck Jacob as he'd reached for the button to open the door: he didn't know Scott's first name. He knew he could be opening the door on her corpse and he didn't know her first name. For some strange reason that had mattered to him.

Jacob realised he was standing in front of the door to Bud's office and quickly refocused his thoughts to the situation at hand. He knocked twice and waited for Bud's customary bark before entering. Bud was standing behind his large mahogany desk, his typical scowl a bit more pronounced than usual.

"What the hell, kid? I leave campus for three damn days and come back to this shit-storm." Jacob knew better than to roll his eyes, sorely though he was tempted. They both knew what had happened wasn't Jacob's fault, but Bud wanted to vent and Jacob was a convenient target.

"This is hardly a shit-storm. You're down three crap people. Big fucking deal. They were all incompetent disloyal pieces of shit." In Jacob's opinion the last 24 hours had been a boon to the school. He'd eliminated a few bottom feeders and the rest of the organization would be reminded of the cost of violating Bud's rules.

"You don't make those calls, Phelps, I do." As if Jacob needed to be reminded who was in charge. Still he had only done what Bud himself would have done, if he'd been there.

"Morris was problem long before I got here, Bud. He compromise the integrity of your system. You telling me you would have let that stand?" Bud grunted in reluctant acknowledgement and sat back in his chair, which traditionally signalled the end of the reprimand. Jacob took the chair opposite him, as had been their custom for the past eight years.

"You took care of him?" Jacob shook his head.

"No. Morris came for Scott, like I said he would. She handled the situation." He thought of Scott as she'd been when he had come through the door; half trapped under Morris, her soiled weapon clutched in her hand. The blood on her face and the fierce expression she wore reminded him of some kind of viking warrior princess.

"And the guards?" Jacob's hadn't broken stride as he ventilated their skulls. The amateurs didn't even manage to reach their weapons before he'd put them down.

"That was me. They broke the rules when they let Morris into that cell." Had they known what he was planning? ALL of what he was planning? Jacob remembered Scott's sweatpants, pushed down to her knees and the way she avoided his eyes as she'd righted herself. In the moment he'd felt anger, which had surprised him. He'd always had distaste, even disgust for people like Morris, but like everything else he felt, there had always been a layer of detachment.

"Where's Scott now?"

"The infirmary. Morris apparently fried her a few times with a modified taser. I wanted to make sure he hadn't done any long term damage." Ordinarily the weapons weren't dangerous to someone as young and healthy as Scott, but this model hadn't exactly been standard police issue.

"Why is that?" Jacob honestly wasn't 100% sure on that himself. Changing the direction of questions seemed like the safest course action. He shrugged, hoping to convey nonchalance.

"She seems like a promising recruit. You don't agree?" Bud's eyes narrowed and for a moment Jacob feared his mentor would call him out for evading. Instead Bud nodded, somewhat reluctantly.

"In many respects, yes." Bud opened his desk drawer and pulled out a file which he slid across to Jacob. 'Scott, Elizabeth' was printed at the top. Elizabeth. It seemed wrong somehow. Too cold. Too formal. She probably used a contraction. Beth? No. Liz. That sounded right.

Bud's eyes on him, Jacob flipped open the file. Scanning the first page he saw her grades and class by class ranking. She was top 25% in computer skills and hand to hand combat. Top 10% of her class in surveillance, and interrogation. Leader in short and long range weapons, evasive driving, and seduction tactics. Jacob tried to not to think too hard about that last one. He looked back up at Bud.

"So what's the problem?" Scott was clearly excelling, and yet Jacob's could sense Bud's hesitation.

"Keep reading." Jacob turned to the second page. School records documenting Scott's delinquent youth. Fights, theft. A few notes from various child psychologists, suggesting that Scott was withdrawn, and disconnected from her peers. All of that seemed fairly typical.

Jacob turned the page and found the surveillance notes of the weeks leading up to Bud's approach. She'd been living in Omaha with a petty thief named Frank Jensen, running small time cons and boosting cars. Then on August 11th, 2000 Jensen had picked up a car in one of Omaha's seeder neighborhoods that had belonged to the local drug dealers. Fifty thousand dollars worth of product was in the truck. Scott had begged her boyfriend to take it back, but the idiot had had other plans. When he'd tried to sell the drugs, the gang had picked him up. Twelve hours after that Scott's aunt had been shot dead in her kitchen, supposedly a burglary gone bad. A few days later Bud had picked up Scott three blocks from the gang's favorite hangout with an unregistered gun in her pocket.

Jacob could understand Bud's ambivalence. Scott's actions definitely suggested fearlessness, and propensity for violence, both of which were essential elements of an agent's makeup, but her motivations appeared emotional rather than logical.

"She wanted payback. Vengeance for her aunt and maybe the boyfriend. She was attached to them. As I recall you told me my detachment was what made me valuable." Bud shrugged.

"It made you ideal, but unfortunately not every candidate is a perfect match and the pickings in 2000 had been slimmer than in years past. I needed the numbers. Besides, you saw her test scores. Until today I haven't seen a reason to cut her, but this incident makes me wonder if she has a place in this school." Jacob's gut clenched in an unfamiliar manner. After all this, was Bud seriously considering putting Scott down?

"Morris attacked her and she defended herself." The words were out of Jacob's mouth before he could stop them. That was the closest thing to a lie he had ever told Bud. While technically the truth, if he took into account the incident in the cell, he'd made it sound as though Scott had been one of Morris' victims.

"It's not what she did, but how. She tried to kill Morris in front of witnesses. She knew the penalty for that. That's not the act of someone interested in self-preservation."

"Maybe she wasn't trying to kill him. Maybe her plan was to attack him and present her case when she was brought to you for review." Once again, this wasn't technically a lie. He'd simply posited a theory...which he knew to be false.

"Are you sweet on this girl, Phelps?" That was a ridiculous question, one Bud should have known better than to ask. It was true Scott had a strange effect on him, but to suggest he had some kind of crush on her was stupid. Jacob didn't have feelings like that. Lust, sure, but that was just biology. It had been a while since he'd gotten laid, and Scott was undeniably hot. His pull toward her was just his body's natural response to an attractive female. It couldn't be anything more than that. He wasn't capable of anything more than that. Was he?

He'd given Scott the shiv. He'd taken out the guards. He'd felt anger on her behalf, and concern over her well being. He'd deliberately manipulated his report to Bud to keep her safe. And what about that warm feeling in his chest when he'd made her laugh? Was that just chemicals in his brain or was it something else?

"Sweet on her? What is this, the 1950s?" That was the key, seize on the antiquated language and avoid the uncomfortable question.

"It's not like you to get this involved." No it, really wasn't. Something was wrong with him. He needed to distance himself, get as far away from Elizabeth Scott as it was possible to get.

"I'm not involved. There was a problem and I managed it. Sorry if I overstepped, but I've been going crazy here these past few weeks with nothing to do." A new assignment was just what he needed to get his head back on straight.

Bud silently appraised him for a minute, before holding his hand out for the file Jacob clutched in his hands. He passed the folder over, feeling relieved to be rid of it. "With Morris gone we're down a combat instructor. I'm assigning you to take over the class until this year's graduation." Jacob opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when he saw Bud's expression. This was clearly not up for debate.

"Yes, sir."

"And Phelps? Keep a close eye on Scott. Let me know if we have a problem." Jacob nodded, hoping his internal turmoil was in no way reflected on his face. The one person in the world he needed to avoid for his own mental health had just become his next assignment. What could possibly go wrong?


	5. Allies

The only sound in the gym was the rhythmic thuds of Liz's gloves hitting the heavy bag. It was a relief to have the place all to herself. The past three weeks had not been fun. She'd been given a week in solitary for killing Morris. It was a light sentence and everyone knew it. When she'd rejoined classes, she'd found that the instructors and students looked at her differently. With some she sensed respect, others jealousy, and others fear. Eyes and rumors followed her everywhere.

When McCready announced he was financing a schoolwide trip to Miami for the week of spring break she was the only recruit not to take him up on the offer. While it would be nice to get out of the hellhole for a while, she knew she'd spend the whole "vacation" looking over her shoulder for classmates looking to knock off the competition. She wouldn't be surprised if that was McCready's true motive for this act of "generosity." It was a test to see which of his students would be foolish to lower their guard.

"Not a fan of the Sunshine state?" Liz instinctively spun gloves ready, before her mind identified the voice. Phelps was leaning lazily against the doorframe, watching her with a half-smile she hadn't seen for almost a month.

After she'd been released from solitary, she'd been surprised and a little pleased to find he'd been assigned as her new combat instructor. The pleasure had not lasted long. Her new teacher may have looked like man who'd made jokes about penis trophies, but that playfulness was now nowhere to be found. The new version of Phelps made army drill sergeants look laidback and he had inexplicably taken an intense dislike to her.

"Not a fan of the company. I thought the campus would be deserted. Guess I was wrong." Liz deliberately turned back to the heavy bag, hoping Phelps would take the hint and go. She only had two more months in this school, and she didn't have time to try and deal with the Golden Boy's multiple personality issues.

"Sorry to disappoint. So what are you doing in here?" Phelps sauntered up next to the bag, ignoring her unsubtle body language that she wanted him gone. She considered "missing" her target on the next punch, but she strongly suspected that she, and not he, would be the one ending up on the mat.

"My hardass combat instructor seems to think my martial arts skills need some serious improvement. Apparently it's not enough for him that I win 3 out of every 4 bouts I fight." Her instructor raised an eyebrow, but otherwise seemed unperturbed by her insubordination. If she'd said the same thing to him during yesterday's class she undoubtedly would have been doing push-up until her arms felt like spaghetti. If this wasn't MPD, then maybe Phelps had an evil twin. Or maybe an evil clone. Liz didn't put anything past McCready.

"Maybe your hardass combat instructor wants you to have a better than 75% chance of survival once you training ends and you're fighting for your life." That was the story he was selling? Cruel to be kind bullshit?

"If you recall if I have fought for my life before and I seem to be in one piece."

"You will face far more skilled opponents than Morris out in the field, believe me."

"So will every other student in that class. Why are you only such a dick to me?" This had been pissing her off more than anything. Being a mean SOB was one thing, but Phelps had gone out of his way to humiliate her, specifically. She had no idea what she'd done to piss him off, but she was sick of being even more singled out that she already was.

"Because it makes you angry. You're a good fighter, Scott, but to be the best, you've got to learn to detach yourself. It's a skill you need far more than any other student in that class and we both know it. Emotion clouds your judge, and makes you make mistakes. It's the kind of thing that could get you killed." Phelps words gave her pause. He did have a point. As far as she could tell, no one else at the school felt things the way she did. It would follow she would need to work harder to control them. Liz stopped hitting the bag and looked Phelps squarely in the eye.

"And you'd care if I did?" Her teacher's smile grew a quarter of an inch at the heavy scepticism in her tone.

"I did expend a little effort to ensure you kept breathing after the Morris incident. I'd hate for that to go to waste." Behold, the sass had returned. Maybe this was way all deep cover operatives became after a while, flipping from one persona to the next like they were changing a television channel. Liz really wished she didn't find the current station so damn cute.

"God forbid I waste your time." Phelps chuckled and the sound brought forth an involuntary smile from Liz. This guy had been an asshole to her for weeks and he had her nearly thanking him for it. He was good, she had to give him that.

"Speaking of wasting time, you're not going to get better beating on a bag. You need a sparring partner." Liz snorted at the suggestion. Fighting in class was one thing, but finding someone at St. Regis who would willingly work with her in their free time...the odds weren't good.

"This may shock you, but I haven't exactly made a bunch of friends here." Honestly, she'd never been great at finding people she clicked with when she went to a normal school. Here, at St. Regis' Academy for Gifted Sociopaths, no one had exactly leapt out at her as BFF material.

"Good. Friends would be vulnerabilities. However it's not a bad idea to make a few allies." Phelps wasn't saying anything she hadn't heard before. Emotion was weakness. Connections were vulnerabilities. People were valuable only if you could use them to do your job. Make them need you as much as you need them. Discard them when they have nothing left to offer.

"Who exactly would you suggest? Anybody worse than me wouldn't be much help making me better, and anyone better wouldn't want me learning how to beat them." It was sound reasoning and considerably less embarrassing than having to explain the real reason she didn't have a chance in hell of finding someone willing to go round after round with her.

"Unless they were so supremely confident in their own abilities that they weren't threatened by you." Liz could safely say, without being immodest, that ever since the incident with Morris there wasn't a single student at the Academy who wasn't leery of her. She wondered if Phelps had heard the rumors that they'd been screwing pre-Morris and that was why she'd been given a pass. Another said she'd been screwing McCready. Liz definitely prefered the former gossip to the latter, but either way it amounted to the same thing: she was under the protection of someone above their pay grade. No one was going to risk potentially damaging the side piece unless they were under direct orders to do so.

"And who would that be?"

"Me." That was...not the answer she was expecting.

"Seriously?"

"Why not? The campus is empty for the week. I can work with you one on one until the rest of the recruits return." Alarm bells were ringing in her ears. Why would McCready's Golden Boy be interested in tutoring her, and during a vacation week no less? Something wasn't right.

"Why you would spend your week off here, helping me, instead chilling on some beach?" God knew if she'd had Phelps' freedom, and resources she would be lounging on a towel a million miles from anyone having to do with the school.

"Because helping you helps me. I've been on bedrest for more weeks than I'd like and a little sparring would be good for me. Besides I hate the beach." Phelps' story was becoming less and less believable. She'd seen Phelps move in class and if his edge was dull, she didn't want to imagine what it was like sharp. Also his excuse about why he wasn't vacationing was weak. This was feeling more like a set-up with each passing minute.

"You hate the beach?" No one hated the beach. The sunshine, the water. Some of her happiest memories with her father had been their vacation to a small island of the coast of North Carolina. They'd rented a house right on the beach. It had been perfect. Just thinking about it made her heart ache.

"It's sandy, hot, crowded, and noisy. Not exactly my scene." Phelps was apparently a 'glass is a quarter empty' kind guy. That was good to know.

"Yeah, but come on swimming, boogie boarding, body surfing...None of that sounds like fun to you?" Phelps looked at her strangely for a minute and she wondered if maybe he didn't understand the concept of 'fun'. She was about to recite the Webster's definition when he finally spoke.

"I can't swim." Liz narrowed her eyes, trying to discern any deception indicators. He didn't appear to be exhibiting any tells, but then again the guy was supposedly a master spy.

"Bullshit."

"No, I really can't. I didn't learn when I was young and I never had a job that needed it." Liz didn't know which to be more surprised by, the fact that Phelps, boy wonder, allegedly couldn't swim, or that he would tell her about it. Advertising one's vulnerabilities wasn't exactly encouraged at the academy.

"Okay then, counter proposal. You work with me on my combat skills, and I teach you how to swim." This would at least put them on more even footing. Phelps had already helped her with Morris and he didn't strike her as being an altruist. She had no doubt he would cash in on that marker one day. She had no intention of owing him another favor.

"Why? I was already willing to help you." Which in it of itself was troubling. Every brain cell in her head was screaming Phelps had an agenda, but she had no idea what it could possibly be. Sex seemed unlikely, in the aftermath of the Morris incident. McCready cracked down on fraternization of all kinds, which had made Liz VERY unpopular in some corners. There was no way the prized pupil would risking pissing of the boss for a romp in the sheets with a recruit. She supposed it was possible he wanted to make her an ally, but she hadn't even graduated yet. There had to be experienced agents more than willing to do quid pro quo with McCready's number one.

"Because 1) everybody should know how to swim, and 2) I don't want to feel like I'm in your debt." And 3) she wanted to know what the hell he was up to.

"Fair enough. Okay, Scott, deal." Phelps held out his hand and Liz removed her right glove so she could take it. The rush she'd felt the first time she'd touched him returned as did those two impressions of warmth and safety. It was unbelievable. Her mind yelled 'run' and her gut screamed 'stay'. Which one was right? Only time would tell.


	6. Sink or Swim

Bud had not skimped on St. Regis' swimming facilities. It was an olympic sized pool, the full 50 meters, housed in a enclosure that reminded Jacob of an airplane hanger. The lights that arched above his head were reflected in the clear, chlorinated water. The tiles beneath his bare feet were comfortably warm, as he knew the pool would be, if he managed the work up the nerve to get in. The problem was that he was paralyzed.

He never should have told Scott about not being able to swim. He didn't know what had seized him in that moment, prompting him to replace the bullshit he'd been about to spout with the truth. In his defense, Jacob couldn't have predicted Scott would offer to help him. Gina, the only other person who knew besides Bud, had never offered. Not that he'd expected her to, of course. Gina was like him, she'd never offer a service unless she wanted something in return. Liz was different. She'd already been guaranteed the favor before she'd made her proposal.

Jacob should never have accepted. He could reason that he'd needed to. Bud had not been satisfied with the reports Jacob had made on Scott over the past two weeks. Any moment he hadn't been teaching a class he'd been in the surveillance hub, checking old and current footage. He'd confirmed some things and learned others including the many colorful rumors that were floating around campus about her. Bud said it wasn't enough and that he needed to get closer. That had been a problem, because the precautionary measures he'd taken to both put a halt to some of the gossip and keep himself at a distance, meant Scott would sooner kick him in the balls than speak to him. Their last conversation seemed to have cooled some of that ire, but Scott was still warier of him than she had been before he'd been her instructor.

"Having second thoughts?" Jacob pasted a smile on his face and turned to face the young recruit. Scott was wearing a simple navy one piece that allowed him to fully appreciate the curves her workout clothes had left to his imagination. Suddenly the thought of jumping into the water didn't seem quite as terrible as it had before.

"Just waiting for you." Scott smiled, tossed her towel on the ground, and dove into the pool with a small splash. She emerged in a moment, her grin reflecting pure enjoyment. She really did take pleasure from this.

"Come on, we'll start in the shallow end." That was a relief at least. He'd been a little nervous Scott was going to toss him into the deep end and see if he floated. Jacob had been riding her hard over past two weeks, and this would certainly be an opportunity for some payback.

When he reached his destination he paused, his toes curved over the edge of the pool. Looking at the water his heart started pounding in his chest. His rational mind knew it was absurd. He'd jumped out of airplanes with no trouble, but the prospect of leaping into four feet of water was giving him a panic attack. Unfortunately that knowledge didn't stop the shortening of his breath or the slight tremor in his hands.

"Hey, look at me." Jacob sought the source of the commanding voice and pure blue eyes locked with his, offering unspoken support. They were a richer shade than the blue of the water. Beautiful. His breathing slowed and hands steadied.

"Good. Now sit." He could handle that. Jacob lowered himself down until his bottom rested on the tile floor. "Swing your feet over the edge." Again he obeyed, keeping his eyes locked on Scott. His feet broke the surface of the lukewarm water. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation.

"I'm going to show you what freestyle looks like. Watch me take a lap, and when I get back you're going to tell me what you saw." He did as she asked and studied Scott as she moved through the water. Her strokes were powerful and steady. She was taking her time, perhaps to allow him a better opportunity to observe, but more likely she was giving a longer interval to adjust to the water. She'd seen his weakness, and instead of using it against him, she was trying to help him through it, while sparing his pride. Scott reached the end of the pool and doubled back until she was once again standing in front of him.

"What did you see?" Empathy. Kindness. Traits that shouldn't exist in a student at this school.

"You kept your arms long in front and back. Your head stayed down in the water, and your legs never stopped kicking." Scott nodded her approval.

"Exactly. It's like riding a bike: you keep moving and you won't sink. Do you want to see some different strokes, or would you rather focus on one at a time?" Again she was giving him an out, a way to postpone. Was it possible she was playing him? Trying to win his gratitude?

"You're the instructor. It's your call." Scott studied him a moment before arriving at a decision.

"Alright, I think we'll hold the others until a different day. Use your arms to lower yourself in the water." After only a second's hesitation, he scooched off the edge and slid in, inch by inch. When he'd gone as far as he could go he took a deep breath and pushed off, dropping the last few inches. When his feet touched solid ground he felt immediate relief, and on the heels of that, embarrassment. He hadn't thought after all the years, after everything he'd survived, a little water would have this kind of effect on him. He was disgusted with his own weakness, and acutely humiliated that he'd revealed it to Scott.

"The first step to being a good swimmer is learning the correct way to breath while doing it. You can exhale from your mouth and your nose, but you only inhale through your mouth. What we're going to do is practice exhaling underwater. Bend at the knees until your nose and mouth are both under the water. Exhale all the air out and bob back up when you're done." Jacob focused all his energy on the task at hand, blowing air out in an effort to keep the water from coming in. He was amazed how much it helped to keep his eyes locked on Scott. He finished his assignment and immediately stood back up, taking a deep breath in.

"Good," Scott's smile was warm and genuine, and he found himself thinking that there wasn't much he wouldn't do to keep her smiling at him like that. "Do it again." Jacob repeated the exercise ten times before Scott was satisfied.

Next she guided him to the wall of the pool and had him practice his kicking. The movement was a little unnatural at first, but he had strong legs and staying afloat wasn't nearly as hard as he thought it would be.

"Good. I think you're ready to try away from the wall. Do you remember the freestyle stroke?" Jacob nodded, fighting the growing uneasiness in the pit of his stomach. "Okay, so you're just going to the other side of the shallow end. Your face is going in the water, then you push off, kicking and stroking. Remember to exhale only. Deep breath in." Jacob complied, putting his face in the water and pushing off. Stroke, kick, stroke, kick. If he kept moving then maybe he wouldn't think of that night. He'd barely finished the thought before an image of the tub flashed before his eyes. Suddenly he was back there, trapped beneath the water, his arms flailing, a blurred face above him. Jacob took an involuntary breathe in through his nose and mouth, creating a familiar burning sensation from long ago. Helplessness. Drowning. He couldn't move. He was frozen. Hands grabbed his shoulders and jerked him to a standing position.

"Breathe, Phelps! Breathe!" Scott's face came into focus, inches from his, her hands still wrapped around his arms. He coughed and snorted the water out of him, and took a few calming breaths in and out. "I'm sorry." Jacob glanced up at Scott, surprised.

"What are you sorry for? I'm the one who just spat up chlorinated water in your face."

"I shouldn't have asked you to put your face in the water. I thought...you seemed fine when you did the bobs." She was right, he had been. He been in control because he'd been focusing on her. It wasn't until Scott had disappeared from view that things had gone to shit. That probably wasn't something he should mention to her.

"It's not your fault. I thought I could handle it." Jacob had avoided the water for years, but he'd always assumed if he truly needed to confront the phobia, he could do so with relative ease. He'd been wrong.

"Well, now that we both know, we'll work our way up to full submersion. For now I think we'll try some back floats." So that was it? No questions or probing?

"You're really not going to ask?" Anyone else would use this moment to push for information, it's what they'd been trained to do.

"In my experience whatever causes that kind of a reaction, isn't something you want to share with a near stranger." She was respecting his privacy, an odd course of action for a spy, but one he appreciated. Unfortunately he couldn't reciprocate.

"Your experience?" Had she seen attacks like this with other people or was it more personal than that?

"We all have our shit, Phelps." Her hardened eyes told him not to push further than that, at least not today.

"Jacob. People who save me from drowning in four feet of water get to call me 'Jacob'." Allowing Scott the intimacy of his first name would hopefully bring down a few of her walls. She was definitely hiding things, and to do his job properly he'd need to become more than a 'near stranger' to her.

"Well, in that case I suppose people who help save me from being raped and murdered, should call me 'Liz'." Jacob smiled, pleased he'd been right about her name.

"Can I call you Lizzy?" Scott's expression went from pleasant to pissed in less than three seconds, signaling his playful question had been a mistake.

"That would depend on whether you preferred breathing air or water." The name was clearly a land mine, and he'd walked right into it.

"Liz it is." The rest of the lesson Scott was all business. He digested her instructions, but another part of his mind was buzzing with questions. Why was 'Lizzy' such a trigger for her? What secrets was she hiding? Why did any of it matter to him? Was it just Bud's orders or was it something else? Who was Elizabeth Scott?


	7. Stir the Pot

Anyone who was confused about why they called fighting a martial "art" had clearly never seen Elizabeth Scott spar. When she moved she was one part dancer, two parts tigress. One of her spinning kicks caught Jacob in the jaw, reminding him to keep his mind in the match. The next punch she threw afforded him the opportunity to grab her arms and flip her over his hip. The moment she was on the ground he was on top of her, pinning both of her arms in place. She tried to buck him off, with no success, prompting the irritated grimace he'd come to expect every time she lost.

"Planning on getting off me any time soon?" Jacob smiled at Scott's petulant tone and started to rise, only to have Scott grab his shoulder and roll him until she was on top. This time he was the one who was trapped. Scott's grin was practically ear to ear.

"Cheater." It was hard work keeping the scowl in place with her grinning at him with that satisfied smirk.

"I did not cheat. The rule is that the match doesn't end until someone says 'yield'. I never said it. So, do you surrender?" Scott did what she had to do to win, and he could hardly fault her for that.

"And if I say 'no'?" Teasing her like this probably wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever done, but she looked so happy looming over him that he couldn't help himself.

"Then I suppose we'll both waste away here from dehydration and hunger, all because you couldn't admit that you were beat by a recruit."

"No, it's more that you're a girl, and therefore naturally inferior to me. The fact that you're a recruit didn't even cross my mind." Scott's grip on his arms tightened enough to make him wince. She was surprisingly strong, given her slender build.

"Does this seem like the smart time to be making those kind of jokes?" Actually no, it really didn't, not when it prolonged the amount of time Scott was straddling his waist. Jacob had better control over certain bodily responses than most men, but he was nearing his limit.

"Alright, I yield." To his joint regret and relief, Scott hopped off him and Jacob got to work mentally alphabetizing the battles fought by the United States in WWII. Battle of Aachen. Battle of Angaur. Battle of Anzio...

"We going again or are you scared to lose twice in row?" Jacob, confident he had himself back under control, sprung to his feet. Looking at Scott's cocky smile, Jacob found himself questioning the wisdom of his next plan of attack. Things were going well. Scott was enjoying herself, and enjoying his company. The tactic he'd intended to try could easily set him him back and it didn't guarantee he'd learn anything of value. No, he was being stupid. Bud expected a report by the end of the week. He didn't have time to wait until Scott opened up to him on her own. He needed to stir the pot.

"When you're fighting, do you ever think about the people who murdered your aunt?" The smile vanished from Scott's face in an instant.

"Excuse me?" Her tone held a warning that he choose not to heed.

"It's a simple question. When you're fighting, do you imagine your opponents as the people who blew your aunt's brains all over her kitchen floor?" The deliberately vivid and vicious description earned him a look of loathing that reminded Jacob of how Scott had once looked at Morris. He was surprised how much it bothered him.

"We're done." Scott pulled off her hand pads and walked to the dojo's door. When she attempted to twist the knob, it wouldn't budge. She looked at Jacob accusingly. "Why is the door locked?"

"Because you're not finished here yet." Scott's lips pressed into a thin line. Jacob could tell she was fighting to keep a reign on her temper.

"Trust me, I am. Now unlock the god-damned door." A part of him honestly wished he could. Unfortunately the rest of him knew that this had to be done.

"Not until you answer the question." Scott's nostrils flared and she started marching back toward him.

"Listen to me, you son of bitch. Just because you are McCready's pet does not give you the right to dig into my life!" Time to give her the final push over the edge.

"Maybe not, but it does give me the ability. A lot of interesting stuff in your file. Did you know when they found your boyfriend's body he was covered in burns? They must have tortured him before they put the bullet in his skull. How does that make you feel? You were with him for what, six months? On the other hand, he obviously sold you out so-" Scott lashed out with a right jab followed by a quick left cross, which he barely managed to block before getting an elbow smashed into his forehead. Scott attempted to follow-up with a knee to the groin, which he was thankfully able to prevent from connecting. When Scott threw her next cross Jacob was able to catch her under her arm and throw her over his shoulder. He wasted no time getting her in a choke hold identical to the one he'd held her in the day they'd met. He wrapped his legs around her torso, holding her in place as best he could.

"Let go of me!"

"Not until you talk about it." It was easier like this, not having to look at her face.

"Why the hell should I?!"

"Because you are angry and that anger clouds your judgement. Like you said you before, we all have our shit. It's only when we don't face it that it becomes a problem." He was telling the truth, if not the whole truth. Baggage like Scott's could get her killed if she didn't deal with it.

"Like you faced yours?" The jab was unexpected, and accurate. She was right, he'd never really dealt with his issue, he'd just avoided it.

"That's fair." Jacob was quiet a moment. Perhaps if he shared his story with her, she'd be willing to reciprocate. If ever he was going to air out his psychological closet, then it should be now, in service to his mission. He could lie and hypothetically achieve the same result, but strangely he didn't want to. The ugly truth it was. "I almost drowned when I was five."

"How?"

"Bathtub. I was crying because my mother was scrubbing me too hard with a bath brush. I remember the feeling of the bristles raking up and down my arms. She grabbed my shoulders and pushed me under and I got a lungful of water. I don't know how long I was under before she pulled me back out." Jacob never cried again after that. He'd learned that tears never made things better, and usually made things worse.

Jacob wished he could see Scott's face. Holding her like this gave him no sense of what she was thinking. Her breath had slowed and steadied, so it seemed she'd calmed down at least. After about forty seconds, Scott spoke.

"I think about them a lot. The people who killed my aunt. The things they teach us here, I imagine using those skills on them. It helps." There was a quiet passion in her voice, a lust for vengeance. Time had obviously not dulled that need.

"And Frank?" Jacob had to admit to being curious. Scott was someone who felt things deeply. How did someone like that react to betrayal?

"I'm glad he's dead. He was stupid and greedy." Jacob heartily concurred with her assessment. What kind of an idiot tried to sell a gang product that he'd stolen from them? The better question was how in the hell had the moron become Scott's boyfriend?

"Why were you with him?" He hadn't meant to ask, he really hadn't. It was none of his business and not something McCready would be interested in, but it had just popped out. His speaking without meaning to seemed to be happening with alarming frequency around Scott.

"I convinced myself that he was only person in the world who really cared about me. I told myself my aunt had just gotten stuck with me after my dad died. The last thing I ever said to her was that she wasn't my family. The last person in the world who gave a damn about me and I killed her. If I hadn't gone with Frank, she would still be alive." That was it, the true source of Scott's rage. She blamed herself for what happened to her aunt. Jacob newly appreciated how blessed he'd been to lack whatever it was made people felt guilt. It was a gift he wished he could grant to Scott.

"It wasn't your fault. You couldn't have known what would happen." Jacob was filled with an unfamiliar desire to help ease her pain. The urge to shift his position so he could hold her properly in his arms was unbelievably strong.

"It doesn't make me any less responsible. Can I leave now?" Her voice was barely above a whisper. The dam was going to break and she wanted to be away from him when that happened. Respecting that wish was the least he could do, given what he'd just made her relive.

"Sure." Jacob released his hold, stood up, and made his way over to the door. He swiped his badge over the sensor, releasing the dojo's lock, and watched as Scott marched past him without making eye contact.

It was just as well she left. He had a lot to think about. What was he going to tell Bud? Scott wasn't built the way operatives were supposed to be built. She felt things. Compassion. Love. Guilt. She could never be what he was, what all St. Regis' were supposed to be. Bud should know that...and yet Jacob didn't want to tell him. The instinct to protect her that he'd felt since almost their first encounter was growing stronger with each minute he spent with her. The sight of her calmed him in the face of his greatest fear. He'd told her things, things he hadn't told anyone else, not even Gina. Not even Bud. Why? What was happening to him? The question his mentor had asked drifted to the forefront of his mind, _Are you sweet on this girl, Phelps?_ He had a terrible feeling that it might be worse than that.


	8. Babe

Jacob knocked on Scott's door with his left hand while clutching the manila envelope with his right. "Liz? Will you open the door please? I have something I want to give you." Silence answered him. Jacob knew she was inside, so either she was a very heavy sleeper, or she was deliberately ignoring him. His money was on the latter.

He should just take the hint and go. He didn't have to be here. Jacob had more than enough information to rely to Bud. There was no reason to seek further contact with Scott. It was smarter for him not to, given how she'd gotten under his skin. The trouble was it didn't feel right to leave things the way they had that afternoon. He wanted to make amends, hence the file he'd gotten her. Jacob slid the envelope under the door and waited. After one minute of silence he finally heard movement behind the door.

Jacob held breath, listening to the rustling of paper. She was reading the report. Thirty seconds later, the door was jerked open and Jacob found himself facing a pissed-looking Scott.

"What the hell is this?" Her voice was soft and dangerous. Any hopes of being forgiven deflated like a punctured tire.

"It's information on the gang on that killed your aunt. I thought you'd want to know that..." he voiced trailed off, unsure how to best proceed. Had she read the file or hadn't she? If she hadn't then maybe he shouldn't just blurt out its contents.

"You thought I'd want to know that the revenge fantasy that I told you was all that had kept me going these past two years is now impossible?" When she put it like that, maybe it hadn't been such a good idea.

"I thought knowing that they were dead would make you happy." He'd called a debt with one of the more technologically adept operatives he knew to find everything there was to find on the gang. He'd been pleasantly surprised to learn that the gang's leaders been wiped out five months ago. The organization was no more and the underlings were no doubt pledged to someone new. Jacob had thought Liz would be pleased that people responsible for her pain were gone. Clearly he still had a lot to learn about her.

"And my happiness matters to you? Is that why you made me relive one of the most painful memories of my life?" That wasn't fair. He hadn't enjoyed causing her pain, he just hadn't had another choice.

"I was trying to help." That may not have strictly been his only motivation for making her talk about her aunt's murder, but it was one of them.

"So this is supposed to be an apology?" Liz gestured to the file that was still clutched in her right hand. Jacob found himself hesitant to answer. He knew what the correct response was. He was supposed to say that he was sorry, and that he'd never do anything like that again. He should say that if he had to do it all over again he would choose differently. It wasn't the truth, but under any other circumstances that wouldn't matter. Lying to get what he wanted was second nature to him, or it had been until he met Elizabeth Scott. He found himself being more honest with Liz than he'd been with anyone else in his entire life. Jacob decided to continue the unprecedented trend, despite the trouble it would undoubtedly cause him.

"An apology would suggest I think I did something wrong. I don't regret my choice, but I wanted..." Jacob's voice trailed off, unsure how to conclude his sentence. Why was he here now? What was his objective?

"What? What do you want?" Liz's question echoed his own thoughts. An image flashed in his mind of Liz storming past him. He thought of the following hours he'd spent running, lifting weights, and generally trying to make himself too exhausted to think of her. It hadn't worked. That look of pure hatred she'd given him when he'd prodded about her aunt stayed with him. He hadn't want that to be the way she looked him.

"I want you not to be mad at me." It sounded so childish saying it out loud, but it was true. He'd gotten her the file so she would like him again. He cared what she thought of him.

"You want me to forgive you, even though you're not sorry about what you've done?" Liz's tone was incredulous, as though she couldn't quite believe she'd understood him correctly.

"Yes." Jacob waited, he face impassive as Liz studied him. After a forty seconds of silent inspection she shook her head.

"You're something else, Phelps." Her tone wasn't angry, which he supposed was a positive sign. The fact that she was using his last name was not. Jacob wasn't sure what to make of her words. What did being "something else" mean to Liz? It wasn't the first time he'd been called different. In his youth that had meant something bad, and as a teen it had meant something good. Jacob suspected Liz's intention had been closer to the former than the latter, but he hadn't heard contempt, just disbelief and maybe a touch of exasperation. "Booze."

Liz's voice interrupted his train of thought. "What?"

"You want to make amends? Booze would be an excellent place to start." Jacob's hoped the happiness he felt at Liz's words wasn't too obvious.

"There's a bar about a thirty minute drive from here." It was in a college town and Jacob knew that the owner of the establishment was more than willing to overlook a little underage drinking if he was appropriately compensated.

"Sold."

Forty-five minutes later Jacob was nursing a beer and watching Liz pour over the papers that she'd brought with them. Her intense concentration made it possible for him to look at her closely. Large blue eyes. Full lips. Thick brown hair. Objectively she was beautiful, but no more or less beautiful than Gina. So why did he want her so much more?

Not wishing to be caught staring Jacob took stock of his surroundings. The bar had made a few changes since he'd last been there. The old school dart board had been swapped out for a new digital model and where the broken foosball table had once stood there was small stage that tonight would be utilized for karaoke. Jacob idly wondered if the two changes were connected. The owner may not have wanted sharp metal tipped projectiles readily available to patrons who were being forced to endure the god-awful caterwauling.

"It doesn't make sense." Liz hadn't looked up at him when she'd make the comment, but he assumed she was talking to him, and responded accordingly.

"According to the file, Antoine Simon was convicted of the murders based on DNA evidence found at the scene. He was member of the South Omaha Bloods. The motive was supposedly territory related."

"Why doesn't that make sense?" Admittedly Jacob hadn't studied the file beyond seeing that people who'd wronged Liz were dead. He didn't really get why she was interested beyond that.

"There were five guys in the warehouse that night. Four of them were killed with a single chest. The last guy, the leader, was found burnt, and strapped to a chair. Someone apparently shot him in the leg, restrained him, and shot him again, this time in the chest. After that they set him on fire. All the bullets are from the same revolver. Does that sound like a street thug to you?" Liz had a point. Gang members were typically pack animals, and they didn't generally have the skill to win a five man to one gun fight.

"No, you're right it doesn't." The marksmanship and the successful frame-up would suggest a professional.

"Here's another thing I don't get: Why shoot the leader in the leg and then tie him up before killing him."

"Maybe he needed him alive. Maybe the killer thought he had valuable information. Bank account numbers? Cash stash? Drug stash?"

"Could be." Liz frowned and flipped to the next page of the report, even though by now she must have had the whole thing memorized.

"Liz, why do you care who killed them? It's done. They're gone." Liz froze and for a moment Jacob feared he'd made another misstep. Jacob had absolutely no understanding of what Liz was going through. He'd never loved anyone. He'd never felt the pain or the rage that came with losing them. He wanted to understand, so he knew how to help her.

"This is what McCready offered me that night he picked me up. He said he'd teach he me to become whoever I needed to be to avenge my aunt. Now that they're dead it feels like there was no point." Jacob hadn't realized Bud personalized his sales pitch. It certainly explained why Liz had chosen to come to St. Regis at all.

"Do you think if it had been you, you'd feel different?" Liz shrugged and finally took a swallow of her untouched beer.

"Maybe. Morris...knowing he would never hurt anyone ever again, knowing I'd stopped him...I liked that. It felt right." Liz seemed almost embarrassed by her confession, as if he of all people would judge her for enjoying her taking out that piece of trash. As she drank more of her beer Jacob considered the full implications of her statement. Liz's differences hadn't stopped her from eliminating Morris, nor had it damaged to her psyche, as far as he could tell.

"You don't feel guilty about it?" A seed of an idea had taken root in his mind, and before he got his hopes up, he needed to be sure.

"I feel a little guilty about not feeling guilty. My father didn't raise me to be a murderer." Her father again. That ghost was probably the greatest obstacle Jacob faced at the moment. Mr. Scott had evidently indoctrinated his daughter with moral conventions of right and wrong. Jacob only hoped Liz was practical enough to bend them, even if she couldn't break them all together.

"What happened to him?"

"Lung cancer. I was fifteen." Jacob absorbed the knowledge and made a mental note to never smoke in Liz's presence. He didn't do it often, just occasionally when he felt stressed, but he didn't want to unintentionally provoke bad memories.

"Sorry." Liz attempted a smile and shrugged.

"It sucked, but at least I had eleven years with him. That's more than a lot of people get."

"Eleven?" She had said she was fifteen when he'd died, hadn't she?

"Sam, my dad, he adopted me when I four, raised me as a single parent." Jacob blinked. He supposed that explained Liz's near worship of the man. Any kid in the system knew adoption was the holy grail, the golden ticket out of the hellhole that was foster care. Jacob had come close a few times when he was little, but the potential parents always seemed to sense that something was off with him and they sent him back.

"What happened to your biological family?" Had she been abandoned? Had she been removed from care like he had been? Or was she an orphan, now twice over. The last seemed most likely. He couldn't imagine anyone leaving Liz by choice.

"I don't know. I can't remember anything about them. Not their names or their faces. Nothing." Jacob's eyes were drawn to Liz's hands. She seemed to be massaging her right palm with her left thumb. Had she been injured earlier during their fight? Liz noticed the direction of his gaze and quickly moved her hands below the table. Interesting. She hadn't wanted him to see what he'd seen. How many secrets was Elizabeth Scott hiding?

"You want another drink? Something stronger maybe?" Liz raised an eyebrow at him. They both knew plying a subject with alcohol was the most obvious method to get them to reveal information. On the other hand, since they were both aware what he was doing, Jacob's offer was hardly subterfuge. After a few moments deliberation Liz nodded at him.

"Sure, thanks." Jacob smiled, stood and headed over to the bar. Liz either believed she had a high tolerance for alcohol, or that she had no secrets worth spilling. He was looking forward to finding out which it was. Jacob decided to forgo mixed drinks, and instead went for a few shots of Jack Daniels.

When he turned back to their booth he saw that a guy in late teens to early twenties had parked himself in front of Liz. A rush of intense displeasure raced through Jacob, killing his good mood. It took him a second to identify the emotion as jealousy. That was a first.

He was torn. Jacob wanted nothing better than to march over to the table and send the idiot on his way, but he couldn't see Liz's face. Maybe she wanted the distraction of this random interloper. He didn't have the right to govern how she wanted to decompress.

Jacob opted to get closer to better assess the situation. He slowly made his way forward listening hard for the sound of Liz's voice.

"-like I said, I appreciate the offer, but I'm good." Jacob's mood soared hearing the barely concealed annoyance. He had absolutely no scruples about intervening now.

"Babe, is this guy bothering you? Are you hitting on my girlfriend?" Jacob injected his voice with just the right amount of alpha male posturing. Liz's admirer took in Jacob size, and stance and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

"Dude, sorry. She didn't say she had a boyfriend." Jacob waited until the guy had scampered back to his friends before sliding back into the booth. He placed the shot in front of an irritated looking Liz.

"Babe? Seriously?" Was the nickname really that objectionable?

"Would you have preferred 'Honey'? 'Sweetheart'? 'Pumpkin'? 'Sweetie Pumpkin'?" The last one earned Jacob a reluctant smile.

"I would have preferred it if he left because I asked him to, not because another man told him he had dibs." That was fair. The exchange had certain proprietary implications regarding Liz that she probably didn't appreciate.

"Well, if you want you could always lure him out into the parking lot and kick his ass. That might bring him around to a more feminist mindset." Liz actually chuckled at that. She watched for a minute as the guy in question bounded up for the Karaoke stage, spurred on by the hooting and hollering of his friends.

The first few notes of an popular rap song started to play, causing Liz to smirk and turn back to Jacob. "Do you ever think about what it would be like to be one of them?" The question took him by surprise. One of the last classes recruits take is culture adsorption. One of the standard environments studied is college life. Given their ages upon graduation the odds are good that agents would have at least one identity that attended an institute for higher learning.

"I have been one of them. A couple of years ago I had a job where my cover was a frat boy." Liz shook her head.

"No, I didn't mean as a job or even a frat boy specifically. I mean...as yourself, if you've never come to St. Regis." Jacob wasn't sure how to answer. He had never bothered too much with "what if" scenarios, he was always far too focused on the present reality. He allowed himself to entertain the possibility: what would have happened if he'd said no to Bud?

"If I hadn't come to St. Regis, odds are I would be in jail or dead by now." He'd have had no future without St. Regis. Bud hadn't turned him into a criminal, he'd just made him into a more successful one.

"I suppose we have that in common. I guess normal wasn't really in the cards for either of us." Liz sounded regretful, as though 'normal' was some prize she could never achieve. Jacob couldn't really see the appeal of being a soft-headed civilian, but she did. He wished there was a way he could give her what she wanted. A round of loud raucous applause interrupted his thoughts, and gave him sudden inspiration.

"Bud promised me, if I came with him, he'd teach me how to be anyone I wanted to be. The same applies to you. You want to be normal? Then let's go be normal." Jacob raised his shot glass to Liz, who took her own and clinked it with his.

"To normal." They simultaneously threw back their drinks. Liz coughed a little, as the liquor burned down her throat, and then smiled.

"Come on." Jacob held out his hand and she took it, allowing herself to be dragged all the way to the stage.

"I can't believe we're doing this." Jacob couldn't either, but he focused his attention on flipping through the song choices. One in particular stood out to him, reminding him forcefully of their earlier conversation.

"I got the winner right here." Liz peered at one he was pointing to started to laugh. Jacob took that as agreement and hastily punched in the number before she changed her mind.

The music started and Liz gamely stepped up to the microphone, "' _They say we're young and we don't won't find out until we grow_.'" Liz's voice was pleasant and she did a fair job staying in tune.

Next it was his turn, " _Well I don't know if all that's true, 'Cause you got me, and baby I got you. Babe_." Liz laughed, preventing her from joining in the first chorus of " _I got you babe._ " Jacob didn't care, because she was happy. He had made her happy. That thought made him feel ridiculously good.

As they sang back and forth to each other, they drifted closer and closer together. The song that he'd chosen as a joke suddenly made sense to him in a way it never had. Two people happy because they had someone to talk to, to hold, to kiss, and to never ever leave them. For the first time Jacob understood wanting that, because he wanted that. He wanted that with Liz. Everything fell away before that realization until there was just Liz, her face mere inches from his.

" _I got you babe_." The final line of the song echoed in his ears as he leaned forward, his lips hovering right above Liz's. When she came the last inch to meet him, every romantic cliche he'd dismissed as bullshit hit him at once. Nothing in the world mattered, except kissing Liz. Nothing existed beyond that moment. She was all he had and all he'd ever need. One thing was certain: there was nothing he would not do to keep her. Nothing.


	9. A Million To One

Miniature elves were pounding on Liz's temples with tiny hammers. She made the mistake of opening her eyes only to be accosted by the blinding light streaming in through her window. Liz squeezed her eyes shut and tried to remember what had brought about her current pitiable state. Through the fog of her memory she could recall a bar. Jacob had taken her. The file on her aunt's killers. Whiskey. Karaoke. That kiss. Shit.

Liz sat up too quickly and the whole room started to spin. Gradually she lay back down, but the spinning sensation persisted. She had kissed Jacob Phelps, McCready's Golden Boy, her combat instructor and it had been spectacular. When her lips touched his she'd felt for the first time in years as though she was exactly where she needed be. In his arms, she was home. Except now, it the light of day, it felt the most ridiculous thing in the world.

Jacob Phelps was a professional spy. A liar. A killer. He didn't just make through McCready's program, he'd excelled. The perfect operative: detached and unemotional. He was the last person on Earth she should be kissing. So why had she?

It was because he'd come back for her, after Morris attacked her. Because he'd made her laugh. Because he'd tried to help her when he didn't have to. Because he hadn't lied.

Suddenly the her room's lock clicked, and the door slowly opened, revealing the man himself. When he saw she was awake, Jacob smiled at full wattage and Liz felt her heart race in her chest. Damn him and his near god-like perfection. Also the fact she hadn't had a shower and probably looked like hell.

"Hey. Sorry about just letting myself in, but I didn't want to wake you. I thought you might be needing these after last night." He placed two bottles of water and two aspirin on her night stand. After only a second's hesitation she scooted up to a sitting position, unscrewed one of the bottles of water and downed the pills.

After she swallowed the thought struck Liz that she didn't quite remember how she'd gotten back to her room last night. Or what, if anything, she'd done once she'd gotten there. Her eyes flicked to her shirt, which thankfully appeared to be the same shirt she'd worn to the bar.

"No." Liz blinked and looked back at Jacob.

"Excuse me?"

"The answer to your question is, 'No, we did not have sex last night.'" Liz opened her mouth to ask how he'd known what she was thinking, but he spoke first, "You looked down at your clothes after waking up in bed after a night of heavy drinking. It wasn't that hard to guess. You feel asleep in the car on the way back from the bar, so I carried you in here. I opted not to change you into pajamas, because honestly that custom always seemed creepy to me." Liz concurred, wrinkled clothes trumped being seen naked by a stranger any day. Although Jacob wasn't really a stranger to her anymore, was he? She probably knew him better than she knew anyone else in the world.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now how about you go take a shower and I go make us some breakfast. Think you can make it down to the mess in about thirty minutes?" The prospect of a shower was tempting, if only to give her time to collect her thoughts. Taking care of her morning breath and bed head also seemed like good ideas.

"Sure."

"Anything you're partial to? Juice? Coffee? Tea? Pancakes? Waffles? French Toast Eggs? Bacon? Sausage? Bagels? Regular Toast? Cereal? Fruit?" Was the man going to list an entire breakfast menu?

"You don't have to-" Jacob cut her off mid-sentence.

"I know. I want to. So what will it be?" Well, he had asked...

"Tea with 2% milk. Extra crispy bacon. Toast with butter." Jacob grinned as though she'd just offered to make him breakfast and not the other way around.

"I think I can manage that." Well that made one of them. If Jacob thought Liz would one day reprocate, then he'd be greatly disappointed. She had never met a food so simple that she couldn't flub its preparation.

A half hour later she was starting to feel like a human being again. She didn't know if it was the effect of the shower, the aspirin kicking in or both, but she felt slightly more prepared for facing Jacob after completely humiliating herself last night. She followed the smell of bacon down the hall into the students' mess.

It wasn't a huge room, just six rectangular table in three rows. Honestly it wasn't that different from her high school cafeteria back home, just a little smaller. Jacob was sitting at the table nearest the kitchen, spinning his fork mindless in his scrambled eggs. He looked up when she entered and offered her a smile which she tentatively returned. She sat down across from him and snagged a piece of bacon. Liz glanced up and found Jacob staring at her.

"What?" Jacob immediately looked back down at his own plate and scooped up a forkful of egg.

"Nothing." They ate their respective breakfasts in a somewhat tense silence. When she'd cleared the last remnants of food from her plate she took a deep breath and chanced another look at Jacob. He seemed to be intensely scrutinizing the home fries that were still piled high in front of him. She had never seen him this awkward before. Clearly there was something he wanted to say to her, but for some reason couldn't.

"So what is it?" Jacob's head shot up, as though surprised she'd spoken to him.

"What is what?" She wasn't fooled for a minute by his big innocent-looking eyes.

"The thing I was being buttered up for." Jacob's now familiar crooked smiled appeared on his face.

"You're very suspicious, has anyone ever told you that?"

"You deflect when you're hiding something, has anyone ever told you that?" What could possibly be so bad that Jacob Phelps, a man she'd never felt was lacking in confidence, felt incapable of discussing with her.

"I'm not hiding anything, I was just waiting until you were feeling better to discuss something. There's no reason we have to go into it right now-" Liz held up a hand to cut off the stream of speech.

"Jacob, whatever it is, spit it out." Jacob sat up a little straighter in his chair and ran a hand through his dark hair.

"Having established what we didn't do last night, I would like to talk about what we did the kissing, which is something I'd very much like to do again in the near future. However I believe you mentioned last night you had some reservations about that." Well, she had asked, hadn't she? Liz closed her eyes and willed the memories of the prior evening to return. Yes he, was correct, she had 'mentioned' her hesitations several times, generally as a follow up, or a precursor to a kiss initiated by her. Perfect. Just perfect.

"And this is why I shouldn't drink."

"So I think one of your chief concerns is that I'm McCready's 'Golden Boy'." Had she really said that? It was seeming increasingly likely that she had. In the few times she'd been drunk, Liz had found that alcohol did make her more likely to share what was on her mind.

"We've established I'm pretty much a freak in this place, correct?" Jacob frowned at her word choice.

"I don't care for the term 'freak'. You're...an outlier." Which was just the politer way of saying she was a freak. Not that she minded. It was better to be a freak in a place like St. Regis than to fit the norm.

"And you are everything that McCready wants an operative to be." Jacob shrugged as though he couldn't see exactly where she was going with this.

"That does seem to be the consensus."

"Kissing is different for me than it is for you. It wouldn't be harmless fun. Not with you."

"Why not?" God, she wished the humiliation would end. Liz took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Hopefully this would easier if she didn't have to look at his face.

"Because I like you. You're funny, you're smart, and when I'm with you I...I'm not like you. I just can't be..." Liz stopped mid-sentence. Someone was touching her hand. She opened her eyes and found Jacob's fingers were now resting over hers.

"When I was seven years old I came really close to being adopted. I was with this couple for six months. Nice family, treated me well. They had a house. They even bought me a dog. I liked the dog. I played fetch with it constantly. One day I threw the ball and it got past the dog. The dog chased it out into the street, and got hit by a car. It died in front of me. I went into the house and told my foster mother what happened. She was horrified that I'd seen such a terrible thing. She was worried about how sad I must have felt. Except I wasn't feeling sad. I was disappointed I wouldn't be able to play with the dog anymore. I wished my throw hadn't be off, so the dog would be alive, but other than that I was fine. I wasn't in pain. I didn't feel a need to cry. When I explained this to the woman, you should have seen the way she looked at me. I was sent back before the end of the week." That was possibly the most horrible thing Liz had ever heard. When Sam had taken her in she'd been a mess. She'd barely spoken when she was awake and at night she could have raised the dead with her screams. Still he never tried to return her, like some kind of defective toy. From what little she knew about Jacob's birth mother, his early life had been hell. Did the potential adoptive parents really expect that not to have some kind of an impact? Did they consider how their reaction might color Jacob's perception of himself?

"I'm sorry." Liz always knew she'd been lucky to have Sam, but she never appreciated until this moment how much worse things could have been.

"Yeah, well it was a lesson learned, a little too late. I lack empathy. I don't connect with anything or anyone on an emotional level. I can't. I'm not built that way. I heard it again and again from social workers and therapists. I was broken. And then along comes McCready. He says this way I am makes me special. It makes me valuable. It makes me strong. So I come here and what do you know, he's right. I'm good at this stuff. The diagnosis hadn't change, but here it was an asset. The point is, I've never had reason to doubt that any of them were wrong about me. Until now. Until you. You are a problem for me." Liz tilted her head, unsure what he meant.

"I'm a problem?"

"Yes. I think about you. I worry about you. I tell you things I shouldn't. When you're sad, it hurts me. I don't know why. Frankly, it scares the crap out of me and there is a part of me that wishes I had never met you." That was quite a bit to untangle. There were definitely some sweet sentiments in there, but on top of them were some less than flattering admissions.

"I'm a problem and you wish you never met me? Not the most romantic things I've ever heard." Sadly also not the least romantic. Frank hadn't been much into poetry. Then again she hadn't really wanted that from him, or for anyone else really. It always seemed phony to her. Flowery words weren't love.

"That's because I don't want to lie to you, which incidentally is another first for me. You're not wrong in thinking that this could end horribly. I've never done romance, not for real. This thing that I feel about you, I have no way of knowing if it will last. Then of course there is the new non-fraternization rule and the fact you're graduating in two months, at which point we will both be going into the field. There are a million reasons for you to kick me out of this room right now and never speak to me again." He was definitely not trying to smooth talk her into anything, so points for honesty, but she starting to wonder about what outcome he was hoping for.

"It sounds to me like that's what you want." Jacob's fingers closed around hers in immediate contradiction.

"No, it's not. I want to stay. Being with you makes me happy in a way I never realised I could be. And I trust you, which is a big deal for me, because I don't trust anyone. So basically this decision is on you. If you don't want to risk it, I completely understand. I will never talk to you about it again. But if you could think about it, I'd appreciate it. I don't want an answer now. I'm just going to go the pool. That's where I'll be all day. Just so you know." Jacob released her hand and stood, giving her one last rueful smile before heading to the door.

"Jacob?" He stopped and turned, his expression uncertain.

"Yeah?" There were so many thing racing through her head at the moment, Liz didn't know which to settle on. She just hadn't wanted him to leave without saying something.

"Try not to drown." Jacob gave a small chuckle and nodded.

"I'll do my best." Ten seconds later Jacob was gone and Liz was alone with her thoughts. She rubbed her hand where Jacob's fingers had rested so recently. She could still feel a phantom warmth lingering there. What was she doing sitting there when all she wanted to do was run after him?

Oh right yeah, there were the small things to consider, like the fact that McCready would skin them both alive if they were caught. Also the fact that in two months time she'd be starting her new life of one identity after the next; weeks, months, or even years of deep cover, followed by short stints of leave. At best she'd see him once or twice a year. On top of everything else he'd freely admitted he might grow bored with her and drop her like a bad penny. In a world where the scales were evenly weighed, it wouldn't be a question. Except the scales weren't even. She'd realized it the second he'd walked out the door. As Jacob said there were a million reason to walk away, but there was also the one far more powerful reason to try anyway: She was in love with Jacob Phelps.


	10. Live, Not Survive

Jacob had been in the pool for the past twenty minutes and he had come to one inescapable conclusion: the backfloat sucked. It was pointless. It was boring. It allowed for way too much time for a person to think, which was something that Jacob would rather avoid if possible.

Could he have made a bigger ass of himself? The first person in his twenty-two of life that he had feelings for, and he told her he wished he never met her. Well, technically he had said "a part of him" wished he'd never met her, but he doubted Liz appreciated the distinction. True it may have been, but stupid it must certainly was. Would have omitting it really have been so wrong?

Even in his youth Jacob had been goal-oriented. He wanted food. In order to get food, he needed money. He'd used whatever method was most practical to achieve his objective. This frequently meant doing something "wrong" like picking a pocket, or stealing a car, but he'd never lost a moment's sleep over it.

Having decided that he wanted Liz, the same philosophy should have applied. It wasn't like Jacob had never pursued a girl before. He knew the tactics, he knew the right things to say. Then again, given that Liz had sat through the same course he had, she might have called bullshit on him. Still, he hadn't needed to be quite so honest. Or maybe he had. Liz's mere presence did have the unsettling ability to coax the truth out of him.

"Can we talk for a second?" Jacob shot up to a standing position, and spun around, his eyes locking on Liz. She was sitting on the edge of the pool, her feet bare and dangling in the water.

"Sure." Jacob waded over to the wall and pushed himself up out of the pool. He turned himself around so that he was sitting next to her, with about a foot of space between them. He couldn't make heads or tails of her body language. Liz wasn't looking at him, but instead gazing across the empty pool with a distant expression on her face.

"I was ready to die the day we met. I was disgusted with myself, with what I had allowed myself to become. Killing Morris seemed like the perfect way out." Liz fell silent as though she wasn't sure how to continue. Jacob decided to prompt her along.

"And I stopped you." If he hadn't been passing the room at the exact moment he had, Liz would had died that day. Even Jacob had to admit that was a hell of a coincidence. He be tempted to attribute it to fate, if he were the type to believe in that sort of thing.

"Yes, you did. You told me I had a choice. You gave me the opportunity to fight for my life. You made me realise that I want to live. I still do." Jacob's heart sank. Liz had only come here to explain why she couldn't be with him. It was too dangerous. The logical part of his mind knew that and couldn't fault her for it. It didn't stop the wave of disappointment from sweeping through him.

"I understand." He couldn't look at her, not if there was the smallest chance she'd glimpse the emptiness he felt within himself. He felt abandoned, despite the fact that Liz was sitting exactly where she had been a minute ago. That foot of space between them might as well have been a mile. He couldn't touch her. He would never be be allowed to touch her again. Was this what people meant when they said they were lonely? Suddenly he felt warmth, unexpected, but welcome on his right hand. He turned and saw Liz had put her fingers over his. What was she doing?

"No, you don't. I want to live. Not survive. Live." Liz's perplexing statement forced Jacob to finally raise his eyes to hers.

"Is there a difference?" Instead of answering Liz tentatively leaned forward, her eyes on his lips. Unable to resist, he eagerly leaned into the kiss. It was just as he'd remembered it. The world dissolved into a haze of unimportant white noise and Liz came into sharp focus. If he lived a hundred years he'd never forget the sensation of her lips against his. He would be able to recount exactly every shade of blue in her eyes. Finally Liz pulled away smiling at him.

"Did you feel that?" He knew she didn't mean the blood pounding in his veins, or the softness of her lips. She was talking about a feeling that ran deeper, beyond the physical. Jacob closed his eyes, searching for something, anything that might qualify. Something had changed, and it took him a moment to identify. He felt still. Where once there'd been the itch, the urge to keep moving, he felt still. Liz was his anchor. When he was next to her, there was no where else he wanted to be.

"Yes." Liz's smile broadened.

"That's the difference. Tomorrow is never a guarantee, not for normal people and certainly not for us. I would rather die going after something that I want than survive, because I was too chicken-shit to try." She was right, risk had always been a part of his life. Leaving the foster home, coming to St. Regis, every mission he'd ever been on, he'd been calculating danger, more often than not life or death. In every situation Jacob had always run toward the path with the potential of the best future. Now Liz was doing the same thing, weighing her possible futures. By some miracle, she thought her best choice might be with him.

"And what do you want Liz?" They were inches apart, but he couldn't close the gap, not until knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt. He needed to hear her say it.

"You." The single word banished any lingering hesitation and his lips locked with hers. She had chosen him and he was going to make damn sure she never had reason to regret it.

 **Sorry the chapter was so short, but originally this was part of last chapter, but then that one felt too long…. The next installment will be longer I promise. Thanks to everyone who has been leaving reviews, they always make my day. AnonAuthorA asked a question for me about Liz's and Jacob's ages. At this point it is April 2002, and Liz recently turned 18. Jacob is 22. He graduated from the school at 16 and has been in the field for six years. Thanks for reading and please stay tuned!**


	11. Truth or Dare

Liz looked at the timer in her hands in disbelief and shook her head. "You're a fish." Jacob grinned cheekily up at her from the side of the pool. For the last five days she'd rarely seen that expression leave his face. And to think she'd once wondered if he smiled at all. How wrong she'd been about him.

"Can I be a shark instead?" The playfulness was something she'd come to expect from him. He could be almost childlike at times, which seemed odd at first, given the life that Jacob lived. Eventually she'd realized it actually matter perfect sense. From what little he said about his life before St. Regis, she'd deduced that Jacob had never been allowed to be a child. He'd always had project the image of someone older than his years to discourage would-be threats. With her, Jacob knew he didn't had to put his guard up. That realization warmed Liz to her core.

"A shark is a fish."

"Yes, but when someone says 'fish', I always think of tuna or salmon. Sharks are cooler. Deadly predators and at that." Liz laughed. He really sounded like a twelve year old boy at times.

"Did you know sharks are not even close to being the deadliest animal in the world?" Liz's 4th grade class had taken a trip an aquarium in Omaha. A guide had given a presentation about how sharks had an undeserved bad reputation.

"Really? What's more deadly than a shark?"

"Hippos, bees, dogs, and cows." Jacob raised his eyebrows and laughed.

"Cows? Cows are more deadly than sharks?"

"Cows kill about twenty people per year in the US alone. Sharks kill only kill an average 6 worldwide."

"So the moral of this story is what exactly?" Jacob pushed himself out of the water and started toweling himself off. Liz couldn't keep herself from staring. Would she ever get used to his incredible good looks? Somehow, she suspected not.

"That sometimes the most dangerous things in the world can come in the cutest packages." She supposed that applied to the man stand before her, but she didn't care. Jacob's puckish expression as he looked at her made her suspect he'd guessed her thoughts. This had become a fairly regular occurrence over the past few days and Liz was starting to find it a little unsettling.

"Mmmmm...yes. I'd definitely have to agree." Jacob sauntered and kissed her, which was another fairly regular occurrence these days, and one far more welcome. When they finally broke apart Liz gazed up at him with narrowed eyes.

"I can't believe you learned to swim in a week."

"I had a good teacher." Liz rolled her eyes. Somehow between the marathon of make-out sessions that had made up the better part of the week, she had cajoled Jacob into the pool. She'd had the idea that since Jacob's fear was tied to a traumatic event, she could ease it by supplying him with some...positive associative memories. It worked incredibly well. Almost too well.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you already knew how to swim and you were just playing with me at this time." Liz's tone was teasing, but she couldn't deny he words didn't hold a small grain of truth. As happy as she was, there remained within her the smallest sliver of doubt. The fear that she was being manipulated by the greatest spy St. Regis had ever produced.

"But you do know better. Don't you?" Jacob's expression had become searching as he studied her face. His open book. That's what called her. Sometimes she wished he couldn't read her as well as he did. She took a deep breath and focused on the courageous part of her heart, that part that held faith, and not fear.

"Of course I do." She hated lying, but telling him the truth when it would hurt him wasn't something she was capable of doing. She only hoped she had convinced him.

"I have an idea. Why don't we play 'Truth or Dare?'" Liz's heart sank. She hadn't fooled him. He known she hadn't been honest and now he was going to invite her probing, despite the fact it made him uneasy. Jacob was trying to assuage her fears without confronting her with her lie. The gesture was extremely considerate and it made her hate that doubting voice in her head even more than she already did.

"'Jacob, you don't have to-." Jacob cut her off mid-sentence with a casual wave of his hand.

"I know. I want to. It'll be fun. I'll even go first. Truth." Liz sighed and pondered the right kind of question to ask. Something that would give him the opportunity to share information of his choosing.

"Tell me something about yourself that you think would surprise me." Jacob frowned thoughtfully and cocked his head to the side as he sometimes did when he was considering something.

"I've always wanted a boat." Liz squinted at him, trying to find any sign that he was kidding.

"A boat? You didn't even know how to swim before this week." At least she hoped so.

"Which is why I thought it would surprise you. Any way, I had this dream that one day I'd just sail away. Disappear into a whole lot of blue nothingness." So the boat was an escape fantasy. He had wanted to run away from his life to somewhere no one could touch him. With the kind of life he'd had, she couldn't blame him.

"Okay. My truth. Truth." Jacob's response was immediate.

"What's your favorite ice cream flavor?" Liz crossed her arms over her chest.

"Ice cream? Really?"

"What? I want to know." Liz didn't believe him for a second. He was lobbing softballs, probably because of how she'd reacted when he'd forced her to share earlier in the week. Whether he was doing it to be sweet, or out of a sense of self-preservation, it didn't matter. For them to have even the smallest chance of a future together, they needed to be honest with each other.

"We do for this real or not at all. What's the real question?"

"What do you miss most about your father?" He spoke tentatively as though he expected her to explode at him when he finished. He was wrong to think his question would make her angry. Liz didn't mind talking about her father, not with Jacob.

"His voice. Hearing him saying my name, or calling me 'butterball.'" Liz remembered how she'd nearly hit Jacob earlier this week, when he'd teasingly asked to call her 'Lizzie.' She'd snapped at him because that name was reserved only for her father, who had loved her, and who she had loved in return. If Jacob asked her again to use it, she would probably say 'yes'.Funny how much of a difference six days could make.

"Butterball?" Technically Liz supposed Jacob's inquiry could count as a second question, but she didn't mind answering. Sharing her memories with Jacob kept them fresh in her mind. One of her greatest fears was that she would start to forget Sam. That would be like letting part of herself die.

"It was Thanksgiving, and I was six, maybe seven. I was "helping" cook the bird. It was a small Butterball turkey, just for me, my Dad, and Aunt June. I picked it up and made it dance. My father laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. Ever since that day he called me 'Butterball.' Your turn."

"Truth." A question sprang to her mind that had popped into her consciousness multiple times over the past few days. She wanted to ask, but it was personal and she didn't want to pry something out him that he didn't want to share. Jacob reached out and touched her arm."Hey. We said we play for real or we don't play." Well, he had asked for it.

"Do you love McCready?" Jacob blinked in surprise. Clearly this was not the question he had been expecting.

"He's not really my type." The glib response confirmed what Liz had suspected, that he wasn't comfortable answering.

"Okay." She wouldn't push. Jacob had admitted that he processed things differently than most people and how he felt about their boss wasn't her business. She was surprised when Jacob suddenly shook his head.

"Not, it's not okay. It's evading. I'm sorry. Instinct, I guess." Liz opened her mouth to tell him he didn't need to explain himself to her, but he held up a hand to silence her. He took a slow, deliberate breath, exhaled, and began to speak.

"Bud saved me. He gave me a future. He gave me a place to belong. When I showed promise Bud tutored me personally. I owe him. I'd die for him, if I had to. Do I love him? I honestly don't know. Love isn't really something I have a lot of experience with." Bud. Liz didn't think she'd ever heard anyone refer to McCready by the nickname. She wondered if anyone else, but Jacob was permitted that kind of familiarity. They obviously had some kind of bond. Liz wondered if that would be enough to protect Jacob, if McCready found out what they'd been up to. Liz fervently hoped so.

"My turn again. Truth."

"Where did you get the scar on your wrist?" Liz instinctively started curling up her arm, but Jacob caught her wrist and placed a feather-light kiss on the raised skin.A thrill of warmth went through her whole body, banishing any self-consciousness she felt about the injury.

"I'm not sure. I know before I was adopted I was in a fire. I used to have terrible nightmares about it. I still do occasionally. Sometimes I think I must have gotten it then...but other times I think that my father...my biological father I mean...gave it to me." She'd gone over it so many times in her head that it was hard to know what was real and what she'd invented. Liz absently stroked the damaged skin with her other fingers.

"He burned you?" There was a note in Jacob's voice that made Liz look up sharply. It was a tone she'd never heard before. It soft, but also dangerous. He quickly smiled to cover, but Liz knew what she'd heard. Jacob had been angry at that thought of someone hurting her. The anger brought Jacob's lethal side to the surface. His choice to immediately mask the expression told Liz, he didn't want her to see that aspect of himself. He shouldn't have worried. Liz had always known there was darkness in Jacob. It didn't frighten her. There was darkness in her too.

"Maybe. Other times I'm certain I remember him pulling me from the flames." Strong arms embracing her, protecting her from the scorching fire. That recollection couldn't be imagination, could it? Someone pulled her out. Someone had left her with Sam. She just wished she knew who.

"Did you ask your father about it?"

"When I was younger I did. All he'd say was that my father was a career criminal who had abandoned me and that my mother had died of weakness and shame." She'd wanted to know more, but Sam had always put it off, saying he'd tell her when she was older. Eventually she'd stopped asking him. As the years passed thinking about her birth parents started to feel like a betrayal of Sam. Wasn't he family enough for her? Why did she care about strangers who had abandoned her?

"How does someone die of weakness and shame?" It was a question Liz had asked herself many times.

"My father never said. I used to imagine that my mother wasn't really dead. I dreamed she was a ballerina who'd come back for me one day." Liz use to close her eyes and tried to imagine what her mother looked like. What her voice would sound like. They were silly musings, but Liz still had them from time to time.

"Dare." Jacob's voice brought her out of her thoughts. Dare? What did she want to make him do?

"Dance with me." Jacob cocked head side to the side.

"There's no music."

"Does that mean you feel unequal to the task?" Jacob snorted in response, then gave a courtly bow, which looked exceptionally odd, given that he was only wearing swim trunks.

"May I have the honor a waltz, Miss. Scott?" Liz couldn't stop himself from laughing. He sounded like he'd stepped right out of a historical romance novel.

"You may." Jacob positioned his hands at the exact points St. Regis' cultural instructor recommended. Apparently formal events were part of the lives of covert operatives. The movies had gotten that right at least.

Liz was surprised how much easier it was to glide around the pool with Jacob, than it had been to dance with her male classmates. Maybe it was that she actually trusted Jacob's lead. It could also be that Jacob was simply better at it than her fellow recruits had been.

"Is there anything you're bad at? Anything at all?" Jacob's smile was pleasant with a touch of smugness.

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid isn't not your turn." Liz adopted a scowl to convey irritation that she didn't really feel.

"Fine. Truth."

"Is there anything YOU'RE bad at? I mean REALLY, REALLY bad."

"I can't cook. At all." Sam had tried to teach her the basics, but she was hopeless. It was a miracle the house had survived her foray into the culinary arts.

"I'll teach you." Liz snorted. Poor Jacob, he had no idea the Herculean labor he was casually offering to undertake.

"You'll teach me? In the 36 hours before everyone's back on campus?" The moment the words left her mouth she wished she'd bitten her tongue. She could not have killed the mood anymore completely if she had tried. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up. It's just that...I'm going to miss you." It wasn't fair. She just wanted a little more time like this, just the two of them in a bubble.

"I'll still be here." Liz sighed. It was true, Jacob wouldn't be physically leaving. He'd still be her combat instructor until she graduated, but they wouldn't be able to see each other beyond that. It wouldn't be just a skeleton crew guarding the perimeter anymore. When class were in session McCready's eyes were everywhere. They'd have to wait until they were both officially agents.

Liz ran her fingers along the back of her neck where she still felt the bump of a surgical scar. Recruits were implanted with electronic cyanide capsules that were only removed once they'd successfully completed their first mission. Their first official kill. It was the failsafe, preventing students from running out on McCready's tab. Liz forced her mind back to Jacob.

"Yes, but it won't be the same. You won't be you. Or maybe that is you, and this you will disappear." The last part had just slipped out, but there was no taking it back. Jacob slowly reached out a hand and cupped her face.

"This is me. No matter what name I wear or what I seem like later, this is me. I need you to believe that." Jacob's eyes were so earnest, with a hint of desperation. She believed him. She had to.

"Okay." Jacob smiled with relief and pulled her into an embrace. Her cheek was leaned against his chest as he soothingly stroked her hair. He felt warm and solid, and his heart thudded in a steady rhythm.

"I won't disappear. I got you." Liz smiled into his shirt at the phrasing.

"-Babe?" Liz tilted her head back to see if he'd gotten her joke. He was smiling down at her more tenderly than she would have believed possible.

"Yeah. I got you, babe."

 **See, I told you it would be longer! Shout out to the Liz RP on Tumblr for the Butterball story. I read it the other day and liked it so much I thought I'd throw it in here. Stay tuned for the next chapter where a very important character will be making his first appearance...**


	12. Let Her Go

"Stop laughing!" Jacob couldn't help himself and more Liz scowled at him, the louder he seem to become. He had tried to make good on his promise to teach Liz how to cook, but it hadn't gone well.

"I have never seen anyone burn that much food before. That's got to be a world record." Liz waved a hand in front of the open oven door and tried to clear the smoke. The chicken had only been the latest in a long line of culinary tragedy.

"It is not my fault. You were distracting me." Liz bent down, extracted the cooking tray and set it down on the top of the oven. Jacob sidled up behind her and snaked an arm around her waist.

"I as I recall, you didn't mind my distractions too much." Liz leaned back into him, which Jacob took as an invitation to start kissing the side of her neck. She released a small hum of contentment before grasping his arm and removing it from her stomach.

"Well now I'm putting my foot down. Dinner was your idea remember?" He'd wanted to do something special for their last night together. Liz had no idea but he'd set up a table and lights on the rooftop of the highest building on campus. It was a stupid romantic cliche, but he thought Liz might like it. Of course it was going to be hard to have dinner without edible food.

"I'll make it." Liz scowled and crossed her arms over her chest.

"No. I said I was going make it and I will. If you can learn to swim in a week, then I can prepare some kind dish for us to eat." Despite the doubts Jacob had about that pronouncement, he knew better than to argue.

"Alright. There is a mini-mart about twenty minutes away. I'll pick us up some dessert while you stay here and whip us up something. What kind of ice cream do you like?" Liz's eyes lit up at the prospect of junk food. Bud took nutrition seriously and there wasn't so much as a candy bar to be found in the school's cupboards. Jacob still remembered the first snickers he'd eaten post his graduation. It had tasted like heaven.

"Chocolate." A girl after his own heart. He leaned forward and gave her lips a quick peck.

"I'll be right back." Liz smiled at him in a way that make his insides turn to mush. He really did love her. God, he wished he had the guts to tell her that.

"Babe, weren't you going somewhere?" In a rush of embarrassment Jacob realized he'd been standing there, staring at her like an idiot.

"Yeah. I just wanted to say..." the words died on his tongue. He was pathetic, he really was. "Don't forget, the fire extinguisher's by the sink." Jacob dodged the dish towel Liz chucked at his head and headed down to the garage.

Five minutes later he was speeding down the winding country road, his thoughts preoccupied with Liz. What the hell was wrong with him? How many men said those three small words every day? Millions. Most of them probably didn't even mean it. Hell, he'd said it before without meaning, no problem. Now he did mean it and he couldn't choke them out. Tonight could be the very last chance he had of saying them to her for a long and he had blown it.

Suddenly Jacob's eyes caught sight of something lying across the road. A spike strip! He slammed on the brakes, but the momentum of the car carried it across, shredding the wheels. The next second a truck appeared out of nowhere and slammed into Jacob's right headlight, deploying the airbag and sending the car careening off the road and into a tree.

Jacob's vision swam as he tried to eject his seatbelt. He realised he'd forgotten to bring his gun. He hadn't even thought about it. How had he gotten so sloppy?

A glance in the rear view mirror told him six armed hostiles were approaching the car. They hadn't opened fired, so that may have been a positive sign, but without a weapon he had no chance of fighting his way out. He raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. One of the men came around to his window and jerked his gun, indicating that Jacob should get out of the car. The moment Jacob complied, he was shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. His last thought before the blackness claimed him was that he'd broken his promise to Liz. He'd sworn he wouldn't disappear.

Jacob came to tied a chair in what appeared to be a barn. Before him stood a man of average height and build with light brown hair. Jacob put his age at late thirties to early forties. He was sporting a suit and tie and donning a black fedora. He held a revolver in his right hand, which hung loosely at his side. The face was familiar, but Jacob couldn't quite place it.

"Oh good you're awake. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Raymond Reddington. I'd ask you for your name, but I'm certain it would be an alias. I presume Matt Buckley is acceptable? It is what's printed on your driver's license." Raymond Reddington. Jacob did know him, or rather of him. The man had recently made his way onto the FBI's most wanted list. A former naval intelligence officer, he'd been active in the criminal underworld since 1994 and over the past few years had established himself as a major player, brokering deals for fellow criminal. The papers had christened him "The Concierge of Crime".

"What do you want?"

"In general so many things. What I want from you though, is very simple. There is a young woman who I believe is currently enrolled at St. Regis Academy. I must insist she be released into my custody." What would the Concierge of Crime want with a student? It was true most St. Regis recruits had dipped their toe into criminal waters before being accepted, but Reddington was deep end, not the kiddie pool. Jacob couldn't imagine what sixteen year old could possibly have crossed his path.

"Look, we're state-sponsored boarding school that operates on 100% scholarship basis. None of the students have families that could pay any kind ransom, so I don't know what you hope to-"

"We are both aware of what the school is Mr. Buckley. You are an institution that recruits highly intelligent and desperate children and transforms them into spies and assassins. You seem a little too old to be a current student, so I suspect you're a graduate, a guard or perhaps a teacher. This is the young woman I am seeking." Reddington took off his hat and removed a photo from the lining. He held the picture up for Jacob's inspection. Jacob's heart started pounding in chest. It was Liz, maybe fourteen years old, sitting on a beach, wearing an innocent and untroubled smile. So that was what she'd looked like, before her world fell apart. She seemed so young and happy.

"I've never seen her before." What could Reddington want with Liz? Her background check hadn't mentioned anything about a connection to the man. Where had he gotten that photograph?

"If that's the case, would you care to explain what this was doing in your car?" Reddington held out his hand and a large black man, not much older than Jacob stepped up from behind and passed him a manila folder. "I can't imagine why the eradication of petty thugs would be of interest to an operative of the Major's." It was the file of the gang murders. Reddington knew about the connection between it and Liz.

"That's funny because I can't imagine what interest the Concierge of Crime would have in some missing girl." Liz had suspected the murders hadn't been committed by another gang, but by a professional third party. The revolver held so casually in Reddington's right hand looked like the same make and model noted in the report. The gang leader had been tortured, presumably for information. What if that information hadn't been cash or money or anything to do with the drug business? What if Reddington had been looking for Liz?

"Are you fishing, Mr. Buckley? If you are, allow me to be blunt. You are no position to be asking questions, and if you hope to live through the hour you will answer mine." Jacob laughed at the suggestion that Reddington was considering letting him walk.

"We both know you have no intention of leaving me alive. That puts you in a difficult position, because I've been trained to withstand whatever interrogation techniques you throw at me. You can't incentivize me with the promise of freedom and you won't be able to force the truth of me. I'll die first. Answering my questions will cost you nothing and might give you the result you're looking for." Reddington cocked his to the side and then nodded.

"Very well. What's your question?"

"What kind of information are you looking for?" Jacob needed to know Reddington's plan before he figured out how best to proceed.

"Access codes, guard schedules and blueprints of campus." Jacob's stomach dropped. He'd been afraid this would be Reddington's answer.

"You can't breach the campus." Jacob's mind was racing. He couldn't let this happen. He had to talk Reddington out of this somehow.

"I can and I will. The intelligence I've gather thus far indicates a limited security force at present and my people assure me we have enough to go forward. You falling into our laps was an opportunity I didn't wish to pass up, but even without the assistance you'll provide, I'd put the odds of a successful breach at better than fair."

"If you think that, than you're a fool."

"Forgive me if I choose to trust the opinion of my team over you."

"Even if you succeeded McCready would come after you with everything he has. That's 30 years of resources. Your operation is less than a decade old. You can't possibly survive a war with him. Don't start a fight you can't finish." Bud had hundreds of millions of dollars and more than a hundred professional agents at his disposal. A businessman like Reddington had to understand the risks he was taking.

"It's a little late for me to back out now, wouldn't you say?"

"Not if you put a bullet in my head and walk away right now. I understand you're good at covering your tracks." Reddington was going to kill him any way. This way at least he could keep Liz safe.

"I'm deeply touched that you'd willing trade your life to save me from a fight you don't think I can win." Jacob ignored the heavy sarcasm in Reddington's voice.

"Any war has casualties on both sides. I'm protecting my people." Well, really one person, but that was none of Reddington's business.

"How noble of you. None the less, I fear conflict is inevitable." Jacob strained against the ties that held him. He needed out of the chair, but the damn thing wouldn't budge.

"God damn it, listen to me: You can't breach that campus!" He had given up reining back his temper. All Jacob wanted was to get his hands around Reddington's throat.

"Why not?" Jacob paused unsure what to do. He had one argument left, but making it would reveal secrets about Bud's organization. Jacob had to make a choice. It was Bud's business interests or Liz's life. It was no contest.

"Because you'll kill her! The is a security protocol in the event of an assault on the campus. If the determination is made that the school will be taken, the guards activate the recruit's cyanide capsule implants. Every student currently enrolled at St. Regis will die." Reddington stared at Jacob for a long moment, an unreadable expression is his eyes.

"So by storming the campus, I would be killing 'them'." Jacob narrowed his eyes, unsure where Reddington was going with this.

"That's what I just said."

"No, you said I'd be killing 'her'. Not 'them'." Jesus, he really was slipping.

"You said your interest was in Elizabeth Scott." Reddington nodded, placed his left hand in his pocket and removed what seemed to be another photograph. He studied it for a moment and sighed heavily.

"Yes, it is. As I believe is yours." Reddington flipped the photograph around and Jacob saw himself, standing on the karaoke stage, leaning in to kissing Liz. That's how Reddington had known he was lying.

"How did you get that?" It didn't make any sense. How could he have missed the fact he was being watched?

"I've had the school under surveillance for the past month. When you made your foray in town, my people followed you." And he hadn't spotted the tail. So much for being the best agent in Bud's organization. Reddington lay the photograph on Jacob's lap. He couldn't stop staring at it. He'd never seen that expression on his own face before. It was almost rapture. It was the face of a man in love.

"Why didn't you just grab her then?"

"Because I already knew about the security protocols. I couldn't risk attempting to remove the capsule without knowing more about the fail-safes." Jacob blinked. Reddington knew about the capsules and the fail-safes? Someone inside the organization had been talking to Reddington. Who? And more immediately important, why the ruse? Why had Reddington pretended he was planning an assault on the school when he wasn't?

"I don't know anything more about the capsules than I already told you."

"I'm aware of that. That's not why I need your help." Raymond Reddington needed his help? He certainly had a strange way of asking for it.

"Whatever it is that want you're not getting it from me. Even if you managed to extract Liz, Bud would find her eventually and kill her. No one student has ever skipped out on their debt and lived to tell about it." Even if Jacob trusted Reddington's intentions, which he didn't, the man would still get Liz killed. She was safer where she was.

"How much money does McCready believe she owes him?"

"Twenty million dollars plus a 20% cut of every subsequent job she accepts." Jacob had paid off about fifteen million of his own tab. Not bad for six years of work.

"Can the debt be paid off by a third party?" Reddington couldn't be serious. Twenty million dollars? Reddington's organization was successful, but not so successful that twenty million dollars was nothing. An obvious and horrifying thought sprang to mind. Liz had no memory of her biological family, but she had been told that her father had been a career criminal. Could Raymond Reddington be Liz's biological father?

"As far as I know it's never been done before. Recruits don't have people willing to fork over 20 bucks for them, let alone 20 million. Makes me curious as to why you would." Jacob scrutinized Red's features. Was there was something familiar about the eyes, or was it just Jacob's imagination? Red smiled enigmatically as though guessing Jacob's thoughts.

"I was a close friend of Elizabeth's father. I've taken an interest in her life over the years." Jacob assumed Reddington meant Sam Mulhuin. From what Liz had said, Sam was an exceptionally good father. If Reddington was telling the truth and he was a friend of Sam's then Jacob was willing to concede the possibility of his intentions being good.

"Prove it. What did Liz's father use to call her?" Reddington frowned, and paused enough for Jacob to hope he couldn't answer.

"Lizzie or Butterball. Do I pass?" Jacob's heart sunk. The nickname wasn't information easily gathered, not with Liz's father and aunt both dead. Reddington's story was likely true. Jacob hadn't realized how badly he wanted it not to be until that moment.

"Yes." What had he been hoping for exactly? That he would determine Reddington was lying, trick him into letting Jacob go, eliminate Reddington then go back to Liz like nothing had happened? Yes, that was it. Except Reddington's appeared to be telling the truth and his offer was probably real. He was willing to pay a great deal of money for Liz to be free. Free of Bud. Free of St. Regis. Free of Jacob.

Jacob's mind shied away from that last thought and focused on the main question: Would Bud release Liz if Reddington offered to pay her out. There was no precedent for such a thing. He had to think as Bud would, as a businessman. Every recruit carried the potential for risk and reward. Many agents died before their debt was paid off. No matter how good you were their business was dangerous. Some agents worked for retirement, picturing laying on a beach with an umbrella and saved their money. Some agents were lifers, never expecting or wanting a life beyond the organization. What kind of earning potential would Bud see in Liz?

"Liz is the top of her class. I don't think he would be willing to let her go unless..." The answer was simple, too simple. If Bud knew the truth about Liz, her kindness and her empathy, her value would be non-existent. Bud was expecting a report from Jacob on the subject when he returned tomorrow. If Reddington made an offer before then, and then Jacob broke the news to Bud...

"Unless?" Reddington's voice pulled Jacob out of his intellectual bubble and back to reality. His abductor was angling to make Jacob the instrument of his own misery.

"You have no idea what you're asking me to do, do you?" Liz was the only person he'd ever loved, and Reddington expected him to just send her away?

"I'm asking you to help save Elizabeth." As though Liz were some kind of helpless princess in a tower. The Liz Jacob knew was more than capable of saving herself.

"And what if she doesn't want to be saved? Did you ever think of that? That she wouldn't want to leave?" Liz had said as much to him, hadn't she? She'd said she didn't care about the risks.

"Not until I saw that photograph." Jacob looked down at the picture resting on his lap. Liz was looking at him a mixture of affection and desire. Love perhaps? Suddenly everything fell into place.

"So that's it. That's why you grabbed me. It was always your plan to make an offer to Bud, but you were concerned she wouldn't agree. You want me to talk her into it."

"Elizabeth doesn't belong in this life. She doesn't belong with someone like you." It was as though Reddington had overheard ever fearful whisper of Jacob's head and was reciting them aloud verbatim. Jacob would just have to beat the arguments back the way he had in his mind.

"She's thrived here. Her aptitude scores-"

"Are excellent I'm sure, in almost every area, except the one that matters most. She's not a killer." Jacob hated the phrase 'not a killer'. It was some bullshit cops made up a long time ago to talk people out of murder. You tell them that they were somehow born morally superior, and that was why they couldn't pull the trigger. The truth was that no one was a killer until they killed someone.

"She's already killed. Maybe you don't know her as well as you think you do." Reddington's stern facade broke for a moment and Jacob could swear he saw genuine sorrow. The Concierge of Crime was pained by the Liz's loss of innocence.

"If Elizabeth has taken a life, I'm certain it was in defense of herself or someone else. We both know that's different than cold-blooded murder."

"Liz is strong. She'll adapt." He'd had a plan. Jacob was going to ask Bud to allow Liz to specialize in vigilantism. There were plenty of contracts targeting the scum of the earth. Liz would excel in that kind of work. She could make the world safer, just as she'd wanted and she could stay with him. It was perfect.

"Perhaps. But it would kill her. Piece by piece her soul would be eaten away. Do you truly care for Elizabeth?" Jacob glared at the older man.

"Yes." Reddington studied Jacob for what felt like an age. Finally he nodded, not at Jacob, but to himself as though he'd come to a decision. Reddington gestured to his companion, who headed toward Jacob, knife in hand. When the man disappeared behind his chair Jacob expected a knife to appear at his throat. Instead he heard the sound of metal cutting through plastic. When Jacob's restraints were all cut he picked up the photograph from his lap and stood. Reddington approached him until they were nearly nose to nose.

"Then let her go."


	13. Worry

Reddington's people dropped Jacob two miles from the school's entrance, beyond the earliest of the surveillance cameras. He didn't mind the walk. It was a perfect spring night; warm with clear skies. A night tailor-made for the kind of evening he'd hoped to share with Liz, before Reddington had come and shit over everything.

The more Jacob walked, the angrier he became at the fedora-wearing bastard. Who exactly was he to lecture Jacob about doing what was right for Liz? Jacob had done nothing, but protect Liz since the moment he'd met her. Reddington had supposedly been watching over Liz her whole life. Where the hell had he been when her father died? When Liz had run away from home with that idiot Frank? When Liz had bought a gun to complete some revenge/suicide mission? Did Reddington really expect Jacob to just relinquish the one thing in the world he cared about to a man so clearly inept at looking after her?

No. That wasn't happening. Jacob had given Liz his word, and he wasn't going to break it. Reddington was a gamble, whether he knew Liz's father or not. For all Jacob knew Reddington's plans for Liz were worse than Bud's. A master criminal like Reddington didn't fork over twenty million for sentimental reasons.

Reddington had given Jacob a mobile phone and a number that he was supposed to contact before midnight. Jacob didn't need to wait that long. Reddington picked up after the first ring.

"Mr. Buckley. Dare I hope you've reached a sensible decision regarding Elizabeth?"

"Yeah, I have, and my decision is to tell you to go fuck yourself." Jacob brash expletive was greeted with with a moment of silence. The Concierge of Crime probably wasn't used to being cursed at, at least by someone as low on the criminal totem pole as Jacob.

"Such manners Mr. Buckley, and after I've treated you with such courtesy too." Jacob didn't even attempt to mask his snort of disbelief. In for a penny, in for a pound as the saying went.

"Courtesy? You make me crash my car, abduct me-"

"And there after treated far more gently than would be my normal custom." As if Jacob was supposed to believe that was out of the kindness in Reddington's heart.

"Because you need something from me."

"No, I WANT something from you. Your assistance would be useful, but I can easily adopt my plans to exclude you." Jacob didn't like the sound of the that. He wasn't going to let Reddington go around him, under any circumstances.

"I told you before, Bud's not going to let her go, especially not with the report I'm going to make when he gets back." He never thought he'd be grateful for the opportunity to talk to Bud about Liz behind her back, but he sure was now.

"But will he trust that report when I show him photographs my surveillance team collected?" Jacob's blood ran cold. Those pictures told a damning story, one that if Bud knew was true would put more than Liz's life in danger.

"Yes, he will. Bud told me to get closer to her. You show him those photos I'll just say I was following orders." Jacob could lie his way of this. He had too. Besides Bud had known him for six years. Raised him. Hell, he'd saved Bud's life less than a year ago. He'd take Jacob's word over Reddington's.

"And were you?" Jacob opened his mouth to let loose a scathing reply, but then thought better of it. The problem with having these feelings for the first time was it made it harder to know when or even how to control them. Now seemed to be one of those times.

"Why do you care? What, are you recording this? Trying to get leverage over me?"

"You may be a very talented covert operative, Mr. Buckley, but one of the reasons I've survived as long as I have is my ability to read people. I believe you were sincere when you said you cared for Elizabeth. I had hoped to appeal to your better nature, presupposing you had one."

"Well, that's on you man." Jacob had never claimed to be a boy scout, or even a decent human being. Anyone who thought otherwise was a fool.

"What I find intriguing is that you called to inform me of your decision. You could have lied, bought yourself more time. Or simply not called. Instead you're phoning hours before the deadline I set to give me an answer I don't want to hear. You're giving me time to offer a counter argument and failing that time to come up with a new plan. I wonder, Mr. Buckley, if you even know your own mind." What was Reddington suggesting exactly? That Jacob was sabotaging himself?

"I know what I want."

"Yes, but perhaps a part of you knows that not really what she needs. Clearly you're infatuated with her, and perhaps she is similarly taken with you, but how well do you really know each other?" Jacob's hackles rose at the implication what he was feeling was some kind of flimsy crush. He knew Liz; her courage, her kindness, her past, and her pain.

"I know who she is." So what if he'd only met her a month ago? When he was with her, he felt like he'd known her forever. She'd filled a part of him that he never knew existed. He wondered if that was why it had taken him so long to find someone to care about. The space in him was of a very specific kind, and the only piece that fit hadn't shown up yet.

"But does she know who you are? Who you really are? What you've done?" Now it was Jacob's turn to be silent. Reddington had found the fear that had been lurking inside Jacob for the past week. Liz was a good person. She believed in right and wrong. If she knew some of the things he'd done in service to Bud, would they horrify her? Would it change the way she looked at him? "You're very young Mr. Buckley, and I suspect something of a novice in the arena of love. It means making the decision that's best for her, no matter how painful it is to you. My original deadline stands. Take the next few hours and think it over. I'm sure you'll do the right thing." Reddington hung up before Jacob could reply. It was just as well, given that he wasn't sure what he would have said anyway. He stared at the phone, fantasizing about chucking it into the woods or better still, smashing it beneath his foot. Instead he slipped it into his pocket and continue to trudge toward St. Regis.

Before Jacob knew it he was standing in the doorway of the mess hall watching Liz pacing the room. He'd been gone for two and half hours and Liz had probably expected him back in one. It was strange watching her look so agitated, when she'd been so relaxed for the past few days.

Liz suddenly looked up and an caught sight of him in the doorway. Her tensed framed immediately sagged in relief. She ran over and threw her arms around him. He fought a wince as Liz unwittingly put pressure on the bruise he'd gotten from the airbag. The physical pain was nothing next to the incredible feeling of peace and joy welling inside his chest. When Liz was holding him, the world was good. He was exactly where he belonged. Reddington could go to hell.

"I forgot the ice cream." Liz lifted her head to scowl at him.

"Do you think I give a damn about the ice cream?! You were supposed to be back over an hour ago! Do you have any idea how worried I've been?!" Jacob blinked. He hadn't really thought about it. He'd assumed Liz would wonder, but he hadn't honestly thought that she'd worry. No one had ever worried about him before. No one had ever cared enough.

"I'm sorry." Jacob hoped the fact that it made him feel good to know Liz had been concerned about him, didn't make it a lie.

"Oh god, what happened to your face?" Liz's fingers grazed his chin, where he suspected a bruise was forming.

"I'm okay. I had an accident. There was something in the road I had to swerve to avoid and ended up crashing into a tree. I had to walk back. I'm sorry if I worried you." He hadn't lied. If she asked, he'd tell her everything.

"I'm just glad you're okay." Liz put her face against his chest and Jacob breathed a silent sigh of relief. He didn't have to go into the Reddington stuff right now. They could talk about tomorrow morning, when he'd had time to think things through a little more. For now he wasn't going to let Reddington spoil the evening.

When Liz finally released him, Jacob looked over to the table with the two plates of food waiting for them. His face broke out into a grin.

"Sandwiches?" Liz lightly punched him in the arm.

"Don't start. For the record I did make perfectly edible spaghetti and sauce, but you were late and I left the sauce on..." Jacob could pretty easily fill in the rest.

"And you didn't stir it, so it burned. So I take it that this too is my fault?"

"I think, from this point on, that should be your go to assumption. Everything's your fault, even when it's not." Jacob chuckled. He could live with that.

"Understood." Jacob suddenly realized that Liz was no longer wearing her usually tee and sweatpants that were standard issue for recruits.

"What?"

"You changed." She had donned a royal blue dress, that stop about an inch above her knee. Instead of sneakers, she was wearing white sandals. She was stunning. Then again, she always was.

"Nice observational skills you got there, super spy."

"No, it's just, I don't really notice what you're wearing." Liz crossed her arms, prompting Jacob to add, "Because you always look equally beautiful to me."

"Nice save."

"Thanks. Although now I'm feeling a little underdressed. Maybe I should go change-" He was pretty sure he could scare up a dress shirt and khakis, if that's the kind of date Liz wanted. He took a step toward the door, but Liz grabbed his hand.

"No. You're perfect as you are." That was so far from true, but he appreciated her saying it.

"Really? Even though I'd didn't come through on the ice cream?" Liz pursed her lips as though she were giving his words serious consideration.

"True, that is a pretty big flaw. How will you ever make it up to me?" Jacob smiled and pulled her in for a long kiss. When they finally pulled apart Liz smiled up at him, "You're forgiven." Jacob grinned and locked her fingers through his. If he lived a hundred years he wasn't sure he'd ever be happier than he was in that moment. Reddington, Bud, everything else melted away. In this moment there was just peace.


	14. Stars

"For the record, those were the best sandwiches I've ever eaten." Liz lightly punched Jacob in the arm, which was trickier than it sounded, given that they were both laying down on the blanket he'd laid out. "Ow. What, I was being serious! You have a gift."

"Smart ass." Jacob turned his head to the side to see the smile he could hear in her voice. Above all things he loved that grin, pulling at the corner of her mouth, like she was trying to keep it from spreading, but couldn't. He loved the joy on her face, and the slight overlap of her two front teeth that somehow make her beauty more real. Most of all he loved that he could make her smile that way. He felt pride knowing he could make her happy.

Gradually the smile faded from her features and a more pensive expression took its place.

"What are you thinking about?" Liz was silent a moment, which immediately raised a red flag. Whatever the thought, she didn't know if she wanted to share it.

"My father told me once that the light from the nearest star, Sirius, takes four years to reach Earth. Some of these other ones take decades, maybe centuries. Right now we think we think we're looking at them, but the some of them are already gone." There was a note of melancholy in her voice that was troubling. Clearly it wasn't just the stars she was thinking of.

"Opposite must be true though, right? Somewhere out there a new star is being born that we can't see yet." Liz rolled her eyes and offered a weak smile.

"You're annoyingly positive, has anyone ever told you that?" Actually she would be the first. Jacob could sense Liz was still uneasy. Maybe his instinct to avoid the looming difficulties was a mistake. It was starting to feel like they were pretending and if there was one this he wanted, it was for their relationship to be real. Jacob reached out and took Liz's hand, gently threading his fingers between hers.

"You're worried about tomorrow." Liz finally turned to look at him, a hint of sadness in her eyes.

"Not just tomorrow."

"Graduation." He didn't ask it as a question, because he knew it was the answer. Liz has said as much to him on the day they met. He'd hoped they'd turned a corner after Morris, but all the doubt hadn't been eradicated.

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this. I don't want spoil our last night together." Jacob winced at Liz's phrasing. It sounded so final, like they were condemned prisoners at a final meal.

"See, there, that's the problem. 'Our last night together'. I think if we avoid this conversation, then we're silently accepting there may not be a next one. I'm not okay with that." A week wasn't enough time. This couldn't be the end for them. He wouldn't let it be.

"Then what would you suggest?" She deserved to hear what he'd planned, how he would help her through the transition from recruit to agent.

"I know you're worried about the jobs McCready might ask you to do. I was thinking I could talk to him. I am the Golden Boy after all." Liz's horrified expression was not what he'd been expecting.

"Are you insane? If you ask him to give me special treatment-"

"I wouldn't present it as special treatment. McCready matches job to agents based on their skill sets. Playing to operatives' strengths is a good business model because it makes him a ton of money. I think you would excel at taking down bad guys. You could repay your debt taking out the Morrises of the world." Jacob's own hopeful smile dimmed a bit when he saw the grim expression on Liz's face.

"You really think he'd go for that?" Obviously, or he wouldn't have suggested it.

"Why wouldn't he? Bud's a businessman first and foremost. Besides he's not such a bad guy. He practically raised me." Jacob wasn't fooled by Liz's noncommittal hum. She wasn't convinced. "You don't agree." Liz paused a few seconds before answering.

"I don't think he should get credit for you."

"Ouch." Though he said it in jest, Jacob had to admit it did sting. Liz reached out and stroked Jacob's cheek.

"I meant he didn't make you who you are. He didn't make you strong or smart or funny or anything of the rest of it. All he did was recognise you were special and..." Liz voice trailed off and she moved her hand to his hair. It almost felt good enough to make him not care what she'd planned to say. Almost.

"And what?"

"I don't walk to talk about this right now." Liz leaned in to kiss him, and despite fierce temptation to do otherwise, he moved out of range.

"Why not?" Liz sighed heavily.

"Because I don't want to fight." Jacob knew that smart move would be to back down. He was lying under the stars next to his beautiful girlfriend. He had pulled a potentially disastrous evening out of the tube. Did he really want to mess with that?

"And you think we would?" Apparently he did. Bud supposedly only recruited kids with high IQs. At the moment Jacob was wondering if his own test had been misscored.

"I think we see McCready very differently." He should just drop it now, go back to kissing Liz. She didn't want to press the issue. So what if she didn't like Bud? That didn't matter. She wasn't asking him to betray his mentor, or even join her in trashing him. Liz was entitled to her own opinion.

"I still want to know." It was like his brain and his mouth had stopped communicating.

"He uses you. He uses all of us. I hate him." Hate? Hate was powerful word. Jacob had only really ever hated one person, his foster father. The man had deserved the word for making Jacob's life hell, and for what he did to...Well, the point was McCready had done nothing to hurt Liz, at least thus far, so why would she feel that kind of passionate anger toward him?

"Why? He stopped you from getting yourself killed." Bud had saved Liz as surely as he had saved Jacob. Without question those gang bangers would have killed her.

"Have you ever seen the movie, _Assassins_? Sylvester Stallone, Antonio Banderas, and Julianne Moore?" Jacob blinked. That was an interesting segway.

"No." Jacob had very little knowledge of pop culture that he hadn't learned in preparation for an assignment. Television and movies just seemed like a waste of time.

"It's one my Dad's favorites. Any way, in the movie there's this story the woman tells about a little bird flying south for the winter. He leaves too late, gets caught in a frost, freezes and falls out of the sky. He lands in a field of cows. One of the cows comes over and craps on him. The poop defrosts the little bird, and the bird is so happy to be alive that he starts to sings. A cat hears the bird, comes over, clears off the poop, and eats him. The moral of the story is this: Everyone who craps on you is not necessarily your enemy, and everyone who gets you out of crap, is not necessarily your friend." He tried to work his way through the allegory to the point Liz was trying to make.

"You think Bud's the cat." If so then who was the cow? Reddington? Or was it the other way around?

"Yes. How many kids that he "saves" end up dead by his hand, before they even graduate? How many die in the field, repaying their 'debt' to him?"

"He gives us a chance, which is more than we would have gotten if he hadn't taken us in." As far as Jacob knew Bud never promised a single recruit safety, just an opportunity. Any recruit that failed to take advantage of it, it was on them.

"How do you know? How do you know for certain that you wouldn't have found your way out? If there is one thing your experience at this school should have taught is that you have unlimited potential. You can be anything you want to be." You. Liz was talking about him. She was angry at Bud, on his behalf, because she believed he could have done better without St. Regis.

"Only because of what I learned here, which was how to be anyone I want to be. Just like he promised." He had been nothing before Bud, just one more street urchin swiping purses. A throw-away. A statistic. A nobody. St. Regis had turned him into someone valuable. Someone with potential. Someone with a future.

"No. You learned how to be anyone HE wants you to be. There's a difference. He uses you and you're grateful to him for it." Was that pity he saw in her eyes? That was the last thing he wanted from her. It was the last thing he deserved. He sat up and turned away from her.

"Everybody uses everybody else. That's the world." So what if Bud profited from Jacob's success? Nobody with half a brain does something for nothing. Humans are selfish creatures, even the ordinary ones. Even do-gooders got something in return for their so-called charity. Feeling of moral superiority, fast past to heaven, or whatever. Altruism didn't exist.

"Is that how you see me? As something to use?" Jacob turned back to Liz sharply. His immediate response was an overwhelming negative. Then he paused. Was he using Liz? When he was with her he felt peace and joy, like he'd never felt before. Was he using her to ensure that feeling didn't stop? Was that the real reason he'd turned Reddington down, not because he thought she'd be safer with Bud, but because he selfishly wanted to keep Liz with him?

"No. Never." Liz had to be the priority. Her safety, her happiness before all else.

"Good. Because I think you're more than what he's convinced you, you are." Liz cupped her hand on his cheek and he put his own hand over it. She had such faith in him. Liz knew what he was and yet still somehow believed he could be more.

"I'm not a good guy, Liz." Right then he desperately wanted to be. Someone honest. Someone kind. Someone who deserved her.

"No, you're not. But I think you could be, if you wanted." He did want it. Looking her eyes glowing with love and trust, he wanted to be the man she thought he could be. But it wasn't that simple. Being good wasn't a choice he could just make. How could he, after everything he'd already done? His life would never allow it. Bud would never allow it.

Jacob suddenly saw his future laid out before him. Job after job of the same old dirty shit. Lies. Betrayal. Torture. Murder. Then he'd wash his hands clean and return to Liz. She'd know what he'd been doing, and try ignore it, or maybe forgive him for it. How could she though, when right and wrong were so much a part of the fabric of who she was? How long before her understanding turned to disgust? Not just at him, but at herself. Is that the life he wanted for her? He needed to tell her about Reddington's offer. Let her choose. Make her make the decision, so he didn't have to.

"Liz..." He couldn't force the words out. The way she was smiling at him, HIM, not some cover identity. Him. Jacob Phelps. How could he give that up? Even if it wasn't forever, couldn't he have it now?

"You don't have to say it. I know. And I love you too." Jacob was pretty sure his heart stopped. Liz lended forward and kissed him, removing the necessity of his speaking. She moved on top of him, straddling him with a leg on each side. The heart that had slowed to halt suddenly felt like it would erupt from his chest. They were rapidly approaching a line they had yet to cross. More than anything he wanted to disappear into the moment, embrace the present bliss and pay the price later. Except he couldn't...because he loved her. Even more than he wanted her, he loved her. What had Reddington said? Love meant making the decision that was best for her, not him.

He gently put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away.

"Liz...I should take you back to your dorm." Confusion colored Liz's features.

"I thought...This isn't about...I mean, you know I'm not..." Liz's flushed features became redder still as she struggled for the words.

"No, it's not that. And obviously it's not that I don't want to. Just...not tonight, okay?" After a long pause Liz nodded and sighed.

"Okay. But, do we have to go in right now? I want to lie here with you a little longer. I promise your virtue will be safe from me." Jacob laughed, though his heart felt heavy.

"Sounds perfect." Liz smiled and lay back down, her head resting on his chest. He draped his arm around her shoulder, reveling in the smoothness and warmth of her skin. They lay there in silence for forty-five minutes before Liz's breathing became shallow and steady. With a great reluctance he extracted himself as carefully as he could.

Once he was standing he didn't dare look at her sleeping form. Jacob couldn't afford any last second doubts. He opened the rooftop's door, and walked into the adjoining stairwell. Extracting the phone from his pocket, Jacob made the call a part of him must have known he would eventually have to make. Damn Reddington for being right.

"It's me. I want to make a deal."

 **Sorry for taking so long to post this! I meant to have it last weekend, but life interfered! Hope you enjoyed it! Also be forewarned: The angst is coming soon!**


	15. Interesting Friends

Liz felt like she was trapped inside a wasp's nest. The constant noise of the other recruits swarming around was a hundred times more unbearable than she remembered it being. The guards that she'd been able to drop these last days with Jacob were once again required and she resented it. Living in a perpetual state of suspense was harder after so recently experiencing blissful contentment.

She escaped to the gym while her classmates settled back into the dorms. Liz suspected a few would start to trickle in after dinner, but for now she had the place to herself. She hadn't seen Jacob and she missed him already. She wasn't sure how she was going to make through the next 24 hours, let alone two months without him.

"Scott." Liz turned and saw a guard at doorway of the gym. "McCready wants to see you." Liz nodded and pulled off her gloves. Following the guard she fought the urge to panic. Jacob assured her he had the surveillance and security from this week under control. No one was going to tattle about what she and Jacob had been up to. This was probably about the plan Jacob had mentioned about kind of targets McCready would assign her. Jacob knew McCready better than she did, and hopefully he was right about his willingness to allow her to specialize.

McCready's office didn't look any different than what she imagined a normal headmaster's office looked like. Large bookshelf, diplomas on the walls, and even an engraved nameplate on the desk. She supposed this was deliberate on McCready's part, part of their masquerade as a boarding school.

Jacob was standing in front of the massive mahogany desk. He spared her an indifferent glance upon her entry, before returning his focus to McCready. Even though she's expected it, the cold mask was disconcerting. Jacob really was good.

"Scott. Come in. Phelps was just about to give me an assessment of your suitability for field work. Proceed Agent Phelps."

"As per your instructions I got close to Scott over the duration of the week. I found her physical abilities to be significantly higher than the norm. Skill wise, she could be one of the best operatives you've ever had. Mentally and emotionally however, is another story. Within the course of a week I managed to secure her trust as well as her physical and emotional affection. The level of weakness and gullibility she displayed has convinced me she should be terminated from the program." Time seemed to slow as Liz tried to process what she'd just her Jacob say. Try as she might she couldn't make sense of his words. Ordered to get close? Weakness and gullibility? Terminated? This couldn't be real. She was having a nightmare. That was the only acceptable explanation.

She studied the man standing next to her, the imposter wearing the face of the man she loved. She willed him to look at her. She needed to see his eyes, those impossibly blue eyes that had stared into hers so lovingly the night before, as though she were the most precious thing in the world to him. He glanced over, took in what she was sure was her expression of utter devastation and rolled his eyes. His gaze swung back to Bud. "Do you want me to finish it, or can I go?" Finish it. Finish her, he meant. Kill her, like it was some minor chore on his to do list. Anger broke through the numbness. Her fist flew at Jacob's head with all the force she could muster. Jacob, apparently anticipating the move grabbed her wrist and smoothly used her momentum to help pin her to the floor. "I did warn you about letting your emotions get the better of you, babe." Babe. The nickname from the song they sang together, now used as a cruel jab from the man just signed her death warrant. All the will to fight drained out of her and pain came flooding in. Memories of the past week flashed before her eyes. The pool, the bar, the kitchen, the rooftop. She'd been happy for the first time since her father had passed and it had all been lie.

"You can go, Phelps. You'll find travel documents in your room, and a briefing file. You're going back out into the field."

"About damn time." Jacob hands released her. In a distant part of her mind she recognised this was the last moment she'd have a chance to attack the man who'd seduced and betrayed her. If she was quick she could probably do something, land a punch, or a kick. Make him feel pain, if only for an instant. Liz found she lack the will. Nothing mattered at the moment, not even revenge. It wouldn't stop the agony she was feeling. Liz was conscious of the door to McCready's office opening and closing. He was gone.

"Don't take it personally, Scott. He was just doing his job." Liz pushed herself up off the floor and stood to face her executor. He was toying with a remote of some kind. If she had to guess, she'd say that it was the control for the cyanide capsule in the base of her skull. It was so much neater than a gun. He could end her life and be spared the inconvenience of a messy clean-up. "I have to say, I'm disappointed. Your aptitude scores were some of the highest I've ever seen."

"Can't tell you how sorry I am to let you down." McCready actually chuckled. Liz tried to calculate if she could launch herself across the desk and wrap her hands around his throat before he was able to push the button. Probably not, but at the moment trying didn't seem to be such a bad idea.

"I'll give you this: you got balls. And interesting friends, it would seem." Friends? He clearly was confusing her with someone else.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Does the name Raymond Reddington mean anything to you?" Raymond Reddington? She learned about him in one her classes on the who's who of the criminal underworld. Concierge of Crime. Recently made the FBI top ten list. Facilitates deals for fellow criminals. Predicted to be a major player in the next decade. Why would McCready ask her about him? The longer she thought about it, the more she decided she didn't care.

"Look if you're going to kill me, kill me. I'm done playing your little head games." McCready stared hard at her for a moment, before shrugging and pressing a button on the device in his hand. Liz tensed and felt...nothing. Had the capsule malfunctioned? McCready smirked at her.

"As it turns out you're in luck, Scott. You're worth more alive than dead. Your contract's been bought out by a third party. You're in his debt now, not mine. Word of warning. You reveal anything about this school to anyone, including your new boss, and you're dead." He hit a button on the intercom. "Warren, get a couple of guard in here to escort Scott down to medical. Tell them they have authorization to pull her tag. It's been deactivated." Liz's head felt like it was going to explode. Her world was spinning and spinning and she just wanted it to stop.

The next few hours passed in a blur. She had a vague recollection of the incision on her neck, and then being shoved into the back of a van. For the most part her remained trapped in the past few days, trying to understand how she'd been so wrong.

"Let's go." Liz's door was pulled open and she was roughly yanked out. She blinked as he eyes adjusted to the light. She was in an airfield. Her shackles made it difficult to move with ease, but that didn't stop the guards from 'helping' her along. She immediately recognised the man casually leaning against the side of the plane as Raymond Reddington. He hair was shorter, and more groomed that it appeared in the photo the Feds used for their wanted posters, but it was definitely him. They way he was looking at her was off putting. He was smiling as though the sight of her was a long awaited delight. It faltered a bit when he took in the restraints.

"I think we dispense with the chains, gentlemen. They won't be necessary." Reddington nodded at a large black man standing next to him, who walked over and handed a large black case to one of Liz's guards. After examining the contents he nodded to his partner, who unshackled Liz. Together they retreated to the SUV. A minute later Liz was alone with Reddington and his associate. Neither one of them had a gun pointed at he, but she imagined that would change if she attempted to make a run for it.

"Miss Scott, what a pleasure. I'm sure you must be famished after your drive. I have the most delightful yogurt pretzels-"

"What to do want from me?" Liz was not interested in the benevolent uncle routine. If this man had paid to have her released from McCready's school there had to be a reason.

"Straight to the point I see. I'll attempt to be as direct as I'm capable. I'm here to help you. My intention is to take you to Ohama and help you resume the life that was...derailed in recent years." That was the story he was going with? He's her fairy godfather who just wanted to help her. You'd think a criminal of Reddington's caliber would be able to come up with a better lie.

"Yeah right."

"I understand it's difficult especially given your recent experiences to trust a stranger. I wouldn't expect you to take any of this on faith. This may help assuage your doubts." He reached into his jacket, and she tensed, expected a gun to emerge. Instead he removed an envelope.

"You wrote me letter?" She'd heard this guy was eccentric. She might have to revise that to straight up nuts.

"No. I'm merely the courier. The author of the note is a young man I believe you know as Jacob Phelps."


	16. The Cow or The Cat

_Lizzie,_

 _I am so sorry. Whatever punishment you've envisioned for me, whatever torture, whatever death, I promise that none of it is worse than the pain I feel now, imagining what I've done to you. I have hurt you and I have it deliberately, and for that I expect no forgiveness. My intention in writing this note is for you to understand why I felt I had no choice. You deserve the truth, and the truth is that I love you. I love you. Strange, how easy it is to write the words I couldn't say to your face._

 _I have never lied to you. Everything I've ever told you is the truth. I have omitted things, and it is of those two instances I wish to speak to you. The first was my assignment from McCready. The night you killed Morris I was summoned to McCready's office and questioned about the incident. I defended you, perhaps too vehemently, and this I now believe is why he asked me to stay on as combat instructor and keep an eye on you._

 _When you requested to remain on campus this past week, Bud asked me to stay and conduct a more thorough evaluation of you. That was why I pushed you to speak on topics which I knew you wanted left alone. I had everything I needed by the end of the our first full day together. I knew I should have terminated contact after that, but I couldn't. I was already in love with you. I think maybe I had been since that first time we spoke in your cell. I didn't know it then, but I think McCready suspected it. Looking back I think my assignment had more to do with me than you. It wasn't your fitness McCready was questioning, but mine._

 _My second omission was the whole of what happened the last night, when I went to get the ice cream. I was deliberately driven off the road by Reddington's men. He claimed to be a friend of your adoptive father and he knew things about you that seemed to support the claim. He offered to pay get you away from McCready._

 _I want you know that I said, "no" at first. I didn't trust him, and I didn't want to let you go. You were...are...everything to me Liz. I have never wanted anything so much as to be with you always. Unfortunately always was never really an option for us._

 _Last night you told me you thought I could be a 'good guy' if I wanted. You were wrong. The choices I've made, the path I've taken, isn't one I can turn back from. It's too late for me. It's not too late for you. I knew if I was half the man you believed me capable of being, I had only one choice. I needed to get you away from McCready. If you're reading this note, it means I've succeeded._

 _I know you're probably furious that I didn't tell you about this, but I couldn't. I needed your reaction to be genuine. McCready has had decades of detecting liars, and deception has never been your forte. I also knew you wouldn't agree to this next part. I'm not coming with you. Reddington and I agreed that any further contact would put both of us in jeopardy. If Bud suspects that I lied and manipulated him, he'll kill us both._

 _As for Reddington, I'm still not sure if he has a secondary agenda. I'm leaving the decision of whether or not to trust him in your hands. As a condition of our deal, I injected Reddington with a slow acting snake venom. Left untreated it will kill him within 24 hours. I've provided him with two antivenoms. One will kill him, one will save him. You decide which to give him._

 _There's really nothing left for me say except, thank you. In the short time I've known you, you have made me happier than a man like me ever deserved to be. I will miss you more than you will ever know._

 _Love,_

 _Jacob_

Warm tears streamed down Liz's cheeks as she carefully folded Jacob's letter. That bastard. That fucking, manipulative, high-handed bastard. She was going to kill him. She was going to find him and she was going to kill him.

"Take me back to St. Regis."

"Elizabeth, you're not thinking clearly." Liz glared at the man who had conspired with her son of a bitch boyfriend.

"You don't know what the hell I'm thinking, otherwise you would shut up and hand over your keys, because you would know I'm this close from wrapping my hands around your God-damned throat. " The large black man took a step toward her, but a look from Reddington stopped him in his tracks.

"I realise you're upset, but Mr. Phelps is no longer at St. Regis. By now he's no doubt on his way to a destination known only to Bill McCready."

"Well, then that's who I'll ask." Liz mentally recounted everything she'd learned in advanced interrogation, trying to decide which technique would serve her best with McCready. The way she was feeling at the moment, she wasn't averse to trying them all.

"Elizabeth, that campus is heavily fortified. You will achieve nothing by getting yourself killed." She mentally re-focused on Reddington. He was right, she couldn't get McCready on her own.

"And that's why you're going to help me." Reddington was the one who had caused this whole fiasco and he would be the one to fix it. The concierge of crime had to have mercenaries teams trained in extractions on his payroll.

"No, I won't." No? He had turned her life upside down, taken her from the man she loved and he was going to tell her, "no"?

"You're forgetting one thing: I'm the only one who can tell you which antivenom will save you. Without that you're dead." If the sweat on Reddington's forehead was any indication, the poison was already doing its work. The life of the international criminal was in her hands.

"Actually my odds are fifty/fifty. I've faced worse. I won't allow you to risk your life finding a man who doesn't wish to be found. You need to respect his choice."

"Like he respected mine?" Jacob and Reddington had plotted to rob her of her right to make her own decisions. She was a legal adult and they were treating her like an idiot child.

"Even if you were able to breach the campus, and you got him to talk, what then? Find Mr. Phelps, and spend your lives running from McCready's organization? How long do you think the two of you would last?" Liz ignored the sickened feeling in the pit of her stomach. What the hell did Reddington know? She and Jacob were both smart and trained. They would find a way to survive.

"What does it matter to you?!" At the moment she hated Reddington almost as much as she hated McCready. If he hadn't interfered none of this would be happening.

"Your father was a dear friend. When I learned his daughter was trouble-"

"I was fine. I had a plan. Jacob and I had a plan." It hadn't been perfect, true, but it was better than facing a future without the one person in the world who loved her.

"Is that really what you wanted? A life as one of McCready's operatives?" The way Reddington asked the question bothered her, as though he was already sure of the answer. as though he knew her.

"I wanted a life with the man I love. Is that so hard for you to understand?!" Had the smug international criminal loved anyone? Could he possibly understand what he'd taken from her? Liz thought she saw a flicker of sadness flash through Reddington's eyes. Maybe he did get it after all.

"No, suppose not. But what's done is done. Dembe and I will be boarding my jet now. I'd like you come with us, but I won't force you to. Whatever you decide I want you to have this." Reddington's associate ducked into the plane and returned with a wrapped regular package. He walked over and placed it in Liz's hands. It was surprisingly heavy. "We'll be taking off in five minutes." Both men disappeared into the plane, leaving Liz alone in the air field.

After debating for a few seconds, she ripped off the plain red paper and found she was holding a music box. It was antique and in excellent condition. Liz lifted the lid and a familiar melody began to play. Tears welled in her eyes as she identified the song as the one her father had hummed to her after her nightmares. She closed her eyes and for a moment she felt as though he was with her again. How had Reddington known?

Reddington had claimed to be a friend of her father's. It was hard to imagine Sam as being friends with a high ranking member of the criminal underworld, and yet how else could Reddington had learned about the song?

Reddington's smile when she walked onto the plane was so pleased it made her uncomfortable.

"Elizabeth I-" Liz raised a hand, not wishing to hear anything he had to say.

"Show me the antivenoms." Reddington reached his hand into his pocket and removed two vials. On one vial Jacob had drawn a picture of a cat and on the other he'd made a cow. Clever Jacob, using the story she'd told him the night before. Was Reddington the cow, who'd shit on her, but ultimately helped her, or was he the cat, who'd gotten her out of shit, only to eat her himself?

"I assume the pictures have some significance to you." She looked into Reddington's eyes. This was a dangerous man; a killer, a criminal, and yet the only two people she'd ever loved had seemingly tied her to him.

"The cow." Liz didn't stick around to see if Reddington trusted her recommendation. She chose a seat as far away from him as possible in the small aircraft. Once she'd buckled herself in she opened the music box once again. The music brought back memories of comfort that she needed.

Two months ago this all would have been a wonderful dream. She was free of St. Regis. She'd have a chance to start her life over. Now all that seemed to pale in the wake of her loss. Jacob was gone. She's never hear his laugh, or see his crooked smile again. He'd never hold her in his arms. Her lips would never again touch his. Liz clung to the music box as though it were her old stuffed bunny rabbit, and wept.


	17. Critical Mass

Jacob watched the subjects stroll down the sidewalk together. The woman said something and the man smiled, and took her hand. Jacob's hands instinctively tightened on his binoculars. He inhaled through his nose and out through his mouth. He needed to remain calm. Professional. This was just another faceless man and woman, removed from him in every way. Yeah, right. Some operative he was; he couldn't even lie to himself these days.

The man raised an arm and hailed a cab. The couple got in and Jacob started his own car with a grim sense of where he would be tailing them to. He pulled out to follow the taxi, then reached in his pocket and hit the speed dial on his phone.

"Tell me you have something." Jacob waited for a response from the irritating British mercenary he'd been saddled with for the past four months. Reddington claimed Ezra was there to make his current job easier to manage. That was bullshit. The Brit wasn't back-up, he was a baby-sitter.

Four months ago Reddington had reached out, as per their agreement, to inform Jacob that he was being stalked by an invisible enemy and that the threat level against Liz had risen. Jacob had gotten the distinct impression Reddington had hoped he would no longer be interested in the news. Reddington had had to live with disappointment.

"No, just, like there wasn't anything the first time I broke in. There are no hidden caches in the floor, or in the vents. I even checked the cereal like you asked. Nothing. We vetted his history, and his banking records. He's clean." Clean, right. How many times had someone said the exact same thing about Jacob? No, his instincts were screaming that the man headed back toward Liz's apartment building was a fraud.

"No one's that clean. Keep looking." How many male teachers were there any way? What were the odds Liz would just happened to bump into a handsome educator in her regular coffee place? Clearly the man was playing on Liz's weakness for children.

"You know you're not my boss, right? I don't take orders from you." God, he was sick of hearing Ezra bitch.

"You want me to tell me to tell Reddington you aren't pulling your weight?" If Jacob was going to be saddled with a partner, then that partner was going to damn well do his job.

"Look, you bastard, I drove all the way here, on my night off, to recheck the apartment of the highly dangerous substitute teacher, all because you saw the man sneeze." Jacob resisted the urge to grind his teeth. The Brit was supposedly ex-MI-6, and yet sometimes he felt like he was talking to a civilian.

"It wasn't that he sneezed, it was that he sneezed when she asked him about that bar that's supposedly the social hub of his Alma Mater. It's textbook spycraft to avoid being tripped up." What the hell was British intelligence teaching its agents these days?

"Or he just has allergies." Jacob's heart sunk as the cab stopped and both Liz and her date emerged. He drove passed the building's entrance and circle around the block pull into a parking space. Unbeknownst to Liz, he and Ezra had taken an apartment at the end of her hall. He nodded at the doorman as he passed through the building's lobby.

"Did you check the mattress?"

"Yes, I checked under the mattress." Jacob waited until the elevator doors fully shut before exploding.

"No, not UNDER that mattress, IN the mattress! We're not looking for a sixteen year old's porn stash!" Christ, he hated working with amateurs.

"If I gut it, he'll know someone was here. We don't have time to swap out the mattress." Jacob fingernails dug into his palms.

"Scott's invited him into her apartment. Trust me, if I'm wrong we'll have plenty of time find a replacement."

"I didn't know better I'd say you sounded jealous." He was jealous. Jacob had been fortunate in the months he'd been surveiling Liz. He'd arrived only a week after she'd split from her long term boyfriend. This supposed teacher was the first man she'd been out with since he'd showed up. In theory he was fine with her dating. He wanted her to be happy. That didn't make it any easier to watch. If there was even the smallest chance this guy wasn't who he said he was, then there was no way in hell he was letting him getting any closer to Liz.

"Just shut up and do your damn job." Jacob heard the sound of knife tearing fabric. Finally.

"Sounds like I struck a...Son of bitch." Ezra sounded genuinely shocked, but without Ezra in the room it was difficult to tell.

"What?"

"There's a go bag. Cash, passports, gun. You were right." The momentary rush of satisfaction was directly followed by intense rage. That bastard had conned his way into Liz's life right under Jacob's damn nose.

"Fuck this." Jacob marched down the hall to Liz's door. He was going pummel that son of a bitch within an inch of his life, and then maybe he'd get around to asking him questions.

"Don't do anything stupid. I'll be there in five minutes. We'll follow him, wait for the right moment and grab him." Jacob barely heard Ezra over the sound of blood pumping in his ears.

"She's in there with him NOW."

"If he wanted her dead, he would have taken a shot already. He's after information. He's not going to hurt her, at least not tonight." No, tonight he'd just smile and charm his way into her bed. It was something Jacob himself had done a hundred times. The thought of someone doing the same thing to Liz made him sick to his stomach.

"There are lots of ways to hurt someone." Jacob's mind flashed back to ten years ago, the very last time he'd seen Liz face to face. She'd looked so...broken, lying there on the floor. There wasn't a day that had passed since that that image hadn't haunted him.

Jacob glanced down the hall before whipping out his lock picks and setting to work.

"I don't know what your deal is with this woman, but Reddington was very clear we weren't suppose to interfere in her life unless it was absolutely necessary." The door's lock clicked softly. One twist and push and he'd once against be in the same room as the only woman he'd ever loved. The thought gave him pause. It was possible Ezra was right. At this point alerting Liz to the true nature of her would-be boyfriend might do more harm than good. If they grabbed him later, Liz's life would continue uninterrupted. Jacob could easily make the impostor seem like an ordinary everyday kind of asshole who blew her off after sex. She'd be pissed, but she'd get over it.

The soft but familiar sound of a body hitting floor cut off Jacob's chain of thought.

"It just got necessary." Jacob yanked out his gun and threw open the door. The sight that greeted him was Liz standing in the hallway of her apartment in her underwear. The image overwhelmed his brain to the point he didn't notice the gun in her hand until it was pointed directly at him.

"You." Her voice held notes of both incredulity and anger. Jacob didn't care. It was the most beautiful sound he'd heard in a decade.

"Me." Jacob forced himself to assess the situation. Clothes were strewn all over the floor leading directly to the half-naked man in a pile at Liz's feet.

"You gonna shut the door before someone sees us?" Liz's sharp voice made his eyes immediately snap back to her face. He realized suddenly that neither of them had lowered their weapons.

"You going to put down your gun?"

"I haven't decided yet." Given how they'd left things, that was fair. He slowly holstered his own piece before shutting the door. Liz lowered her gun about six inches in reciprocation. It was a start.

"So...how've you been?" The look on Liz's face confirmed he sounded exactly as stupid as he thought he had.

"How have I been? Are you kidding me?" Sadly, no, it hadn't been a joke. Ten years he'd dreamt about some fantasy scenario where he'd get to see Liz just one more time, and when it happened what he'd managed was barely a step up from, 'How you doin'?' Pathetic.

"You're right, that was a stupid question. We should probably deal with him first." Work, that was ticket. Potentially dead bodies he could handle. Talking to his ex, he could not. He moved to get a closer look and the gun was immediately back in his face.

"Take one step towards me and I will shoot you dead." Wow. Ten years had apparently not mellowed her temper.

"That seems a little extreme."

"Are you with him? Is that why you're here? Did the Major send the two of you? Do you have a new client? I'm I your new job?" Reddington was probably already going to be pissed with him about breaking his cover. Why not throw a few more logs on the fire? Liz deserved the truth.

"No, I am not with him. The Major didn't directly send me, but yes, technically, I do have a new client and you are my new job." His last job, actually. He'd paid off his debt to the Major just after his twenty-sixth birthday. The last six years he'd been saving for retirement. He wasn't going to be buying an island or anything, but his boat was now in well within his reach. Honestly he'd had enough for a few years now, but he'd hesitated, taking job after job that he didn't need, because he'd both hoped and feared Liz would need him one day.

"Reddington." Liz brought him out of his thoughts. What was she talking about? Oh yes, his new client.

"Yeah. Part of our agreement was that if he ever thought the threat to you was reaching critical mass, he would reach out. Recently an unknown enemy has been mobilizing against him, targeting his vulnerabilities. Apparently you're one of them." On rare breaks between jobs Jacob had taken it upon himself to keep tabs on the 'Concierge of Crime', or at least try to. He still had no idea if Reddington's explanation of his connection to Liz was completely truthful.

"So he told you that I was in danger, but he didn't see fit to tell me?" Jacob hid a grimace. That was exactly what he'd told Reddington when he'd first been hired.

"There was no concrete proof that this enemy knew about you and he didn't want interfere in your life unless it was absolutely necessary." God knew what was compelling him to defend his employer. Perhaps it was that though the accusation was supposedly directed at Reddington, Jacob, as his ambassador, was catching the heat for him.

"So yet again he's making major decisions about my life without bothering to ask for my input." He was definitely not imagining it. Liz was serving dual accusations today.

"I think he just wants what's best for you." All those years ago he had tried to do the right thing by Liz. He'd questioned his decision a million times since, but wasn't the fact that Liz was standing here whole, with friends and a real job and a life, proof that he'd chosen wisely?

"Where have I heard that before?" A knock on the door prevented Jacob from responding.

"It's me. Open up." Jacob relaxed slightly at the sound of Ezra's voice. For a second he'd been worried about noisy neighbors, or worse, an accomplice he'd missed.

"Who's that?"

"My...partner."

"Partner?" He allowed himself a partial smile. Liz remembered that he preferred to work alone.

"Reddington's idea. You want me to let him in?" It was her apartment after all.

"And if I say no?"

"Hey, shoot him through the door for all I care. Honestly, you'd be doing me a favor." His small joke didn't alter Liz's grave expression for even a split second.

"Let him in." Jacob opened the door, allowing Ezra to stroll in like he owned the place. The Brit ran a quick, but appreciative gaze over scantily clothed Liz, before scrutinizing the body at her feet.

"Well...I suppose this could be worse. Granted not a lot worse...Is he dead?" Ezra addressed the question to Jacob, despite the fact that Liz was the one with the gun in her hand. True, it was currently resting at her side, but still, was he really so distracted by her appearance he'd missed it? Jacob then recalled his own reaction upon bursting into the apartment, and acknowledged it was completely possible.

"No, just unconscious. I spiked his drink. He'll be out for an hour or two." Ezra's surprised face swung to Liz, eyes following the length of her arm down to the gun she held there. His bewilderment confirmed what Jacob had suspected for months: Ezra had no clue about Liz's former association with St. Regis. As far as Ezra was concerned Liz was simply a social worker from child protective service taking night classes to complete her Ph. D. in Psychology.

"You spiked his drink? Why?" Jacob was actually interested in the answer to that one.

"He sneezed." Jacob fought the smile that threatened to spread across his features as Ezra shot him an incredulous look. He shrugged and Ezra shook his head.

"Remind me to stay far away from both of you if I ever get a cold." Liz rolled her eyes and turned to Jacob.

"There's a fire exit at the back of the building that opens into an alley. I was going to take him to a foreclosed warehouse on the outskirts of the city. What?" The last bit had been directed specifically at Ezra, who was regarding her with bemusement. Jacob felt that was probably not the safest choice, given Liz's current mood. Still he didn't feel compelled to warn his "partner". Some lessons were best learned the hard way.

"I'm just trying to figure out why on Earth Reddington thought you needed our protection." Jacob couldn't believe the limey jackass was flirting. Worse he could swear the corner of Liz's mouth twitched upward. Just perfect.

"Funny, I plan on asking him that question myself."

"We have a watch post. It's well equipped. Secluded." Liz's attention transferred back to Jacob, which gave him an admittedly childish sense of satisfaction.

"Fine." Liz set her gun down on the end table and picked up her dress from the floor.

"No need to get dressed on our account. We'll just collect the git and be on our way." Jacob could practically feeling the temperature in the room lower as Liz turned a cool glare to Ezra.

"Let me be perfectly clear: I didn't hire you. I didn't want you here. Right now I'm choosing to ignore the fact you've been spying on me without my consent, because at moment you might actually be useful to me. That does not make you in charge. This man was sent after me and I intend to find out why. We do this one way, and that is my way. If you have a problem with that, then you can both get the hell out of my apartment." It really was fun to watch Liz's anger when it was directed at someone else.

"Yes ma'am." Perhaps Ezra wasn't a complete idiot after all.

"Good. Then go get the car. Jacob and I will bring him down in a few minutes." Ezra's eyebrows rose at Jacob's name, but he left without further comment. Liz was clearly a miracle worker.

Once he was gone Liz headed into the kitchen and opened up the fridge door. She removed a bottle of beer, popped the lid, and grabbed the dish towel hanging on her oven. She walked over to the sink and started pouring the beer over the towel. After a few rings, she gently dabbed her neck and clothes with the cloth before tossing it to Jacob. He followed suit.

"Haven't forgotten much have you?" This was textbook St. Regis. When being forced to move an injured or unconscious person in public, the easiest cover was acting drunk. Stumbling was overlooked and people tended to avoid you.

"I haven't forgotten anything." Jacob looked up from dabbing Liz's date and found himself staring into two hard blue eyes. The message was clear: She hadn't forgotten what he'd done, nor she forgiven it.


	18. Statute of Limitation

Liz stared at the unconscious form of the man who had introduced himself to her as Henry Wyatt and tried to summon the same feeling of anticipation that she'd felt preparing for tonight's little endeavor. Her sixth sense had been tingling for months and when she'd been approach by an extremely handsome stranger in her regular coffee place she thought she'd identified her stalker. Everything about Henry was perfect. He was confident, yet sweet. Funny. Committed to helping children. In short he was too good be true. When he'd failed her test tonight, she'd enacted her plan to find answers. What she hadn't counted on was doing it with company.

She glanced over at the two men who had apparently been following her for months. The handsome Brit was looking directly at her. Instead of looking away after having been caught staring, his smile grew. Cocky bastard. Still she didn't get the impression he was picturing her naked. It was more that he thought she was some kind of odd exotic bird he couldn't identify. Jacob was cleaning his gun, something she remembered him once saying calmed him when he felt stressed. He wasn't the only one.

Only a few hours ago she'd been preparing to grill her new 'boyfriend' about his employer and his mission. If she was being completely honest with herself, she'd been looking forward to it. The life she had built for herself following St. Regis was a good life. She had friends, co-workers who liked and respected her. Her job was important. She helped children who had no one to protect them. Most of the time it was enough, and the days it wasn't...well no life was perfect. She knew how lucky she was to have escaped. Whatever highs that old life had offered, they hadn't been worth the lows.

A buzzing caused Liz to turn instinctively toward Jacob. It looked like Reddington was returning their call. Jacob punched the accept key and put the phone to his ear. His expression,gave away nothing, nor did his short clipped answers. Liz was seriously considering marching over and snatching the device away from him when a voice drew her attention.

"Are you really a social worker?" Liz raised an eyebrow at the mercenary.

"Isn't that what it says in my file?" Reddington must not have told the man about her St. Regis training and Jacob clearly hadn't enlightened him. What their individual motivations were, Liz couldn't begin to guess.

"Not many social workers can make a operative, let alone slip a drug into their drink without them noticing."

"Then I guess I'm not many social workers." It was bad enough that she'd been surveilled in her current life. There was no reason he needed to dig into her past.

"Tight lipped, aren't you?"

"Only when people ask me questions that are none of their damn business." The Brit's smile widened at the unsubtle warning in her tone.

"I assume I'd get a similar answer if I asked you about…'Jacob' did you call him? Funny, because he introduced himself to me as Tom. Makes me wonder which one's real." Seems that Jacob hadn't changed much since she'd known him. He was still a liar who didn't trust anyone.

"What makes you think either one is? He is a spy after all. Lying is what he does best." She managed to keep her tone light, but the dulled ache she'd lived with for years suddenly throbbed sharp and fresh. Damn it, she didn't need this. She glanced over at Jacob, who was still pacing the floor, with the cell to his ear. Suddenly his head turned and he found herself looking into his eyes. They were just as blue as they'd been in her dreams for the past decade. For a split second she felt eighteen again filled the opposing and equally powerful desire to kiss and kill him.

With a final nod Jacob snapped the phone and strided over. "Our orders are to wait for the specialist. He'll be here in under an hour. Liz, he recommended that you go home and get some rest." Liz bristled at the suggestion.

"Like hell." Reddington wasn't going to send her off again without answers. She had just as much a right to know what was going on.

"Yeah, I thought that would be your response He said that being the case you were of course welcome to stay. He'll be here to see you in person in about 10 hours." Liz blinked. Reddington was coming here? She hadn't seen the man since he'd dropped her back in Nebraska and provided her with a lawyer to arrange for the legal necessities of coming back from the dead.

"Liz, can I talk to you for a minute? Privately?" Liz hesitated for a second before nodding and following Jacob in the next room. When he stopped and turned she saw his expression was uneasy. This wasn't easy for him either. Good.

"I just wanted to check if you were alright."

"Alright? With what exactly? The fact my date's a spy? That an international criminal is coming here to explain how my life is somehow in jeopardy because of him? That he sent you of all people to spy on me? The answer to all of the above is no, I'm not 'alright' with it." What did Jacob want from her? Forgiveness? Absolution? If so, he was going to be disappointed.

"I take it you're still pissed."

"Pissed? Pissed?! Are you kidding me?" Pissed was what Liz got if someone stole her yogurt out of the staff refrigerator. It did not begin to cover want she felt about what Jacob had done.

"It's been ten years. I thought..."

"Betrayal has no statute of limitations." Jacob frowned at the accusation.

"I did not betray you. Did Reddington give you my letter?"

"Yeah he gave it to me. And you know what I realized after the shock and grief wore off? It was bullshit." Liz had read Jacob note hundreds of times, and after a while she'd even been able to do so without crying. It was on one of these re-reads that the truth had struck her, filling her with even more pain than she'd already felt.

"What?"

"That letter was bullshit. It was a rationalization for an act of cowardice." Jacob's face was a mask of confusion, clouding with a hint of anger.

"Cowardice? You think that my betraying the Major to protect you was an act of cowardice?" Liz gave a short, bitter laugh.

"Betray the Major? The Major got twenty million dollars and his perfect spy back. I think things worked out pretty well for him."

"And you got the life you wanted. You got freedom." The earnestness of Jacob's tone made her want to hit him. He was so utterly convinced he had done the right thing.

"Freedom would imply I had a choice!" That was issue neither Jacob nor Reddington could seem to grasp. Claiming to care about her was not an excuse to take her options from her.

"I was trying to save your life."

"It isn't my life if you make my decisions for me! Lying to me, manipulating me, was not an act of love. It was an act of control. You should have told me the truth!" The one thing that they promised each other was honesty and Jacob had broken his promise.

"I was protecting you." The sad thing was he probably believed that. That was the thing about liars, they were as good at deceiving themselves as they were at deceiving everyone else.

"You were protecting yourself. Reddington's offer wasn't an out just for me, it was an out for you. If you'd have told me the truth I would have said 'fuck them both, Reddington and the Major.' I would have fought for you. For us. But you didn't want that. You didn't want to face having to choose between me and the Major, so you didn't." Jacob had loved the Major, whether or not he admitted it aloud. She supposed she couldn't blame him for that, given that he was the first person who'd given Jacob anything within the realm of a parental figure. What she did blame for was not being honest about it.

"That isn't true."

"Whatever you have to tell yourself." Liz turned and left the room, not caring one way or another if Jacob followed her. Red's man would arrive soon and she'd have something better to focus on than the crushing misery she felt being in the same room as Jacob. Once Reddington arrived she'd demand Jacob be sent back to the Major. Once he was gone it would be fine. Eventually the feeling would pass. It had to.


	19. Making Friends

_Light reflected from the polished tile, making the entire room impossibly bright. Everything was so white and clean. It seemed bizarre that this place had anything to do to with the evilest place Liz had ever known._

" _Liz!" Liz spun around saw Jacob trending water in the pool's deep end. He was beaming ear to ear. "Come on in! The water's great!" Liz smiled. She could hardly believe this was the same guy who'd been terrified of the water less than a week ago. After a few false starts he'd taken to the water like a dolphin. As much it as it pleased her to see him so happy, she had a sudden feeling of foreboding._

" _Jacob, get out of the water." Even as she spoke she saw a ring of dark red appear around the edge of the pool. As she watch in horror it spread inward toward Jacob. His face darkened but he didn't move, didn't try to swim away._

" _It's okay Liz. Just stay where you are." With his words Liz found herself paralyzed, struggling against an unseen force that prevented here from diving in after him._

" _Get out of there!" Why wasn't he fighting?! Why was he even trying to get away?! He was just looking at her, stoic and determined._

" _I love you Lizzy." The red waters closed around him and sucked Jacob under the surface. Liz screamed._

"Lizzy wake up!" Liz shot up, heart pounding hard in her chest. It had been a dream, the same nightmare she'd had countless times of the past ten years. Slowly the room came into focus. She was on a cot in an office of some kind. A man in his early fifties sat beside her with a hand on her arm. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, turning so that Reddington's hand fell away.

"Don't call me that." Her tone was probably sharper than Reddington deserved, but she didn't care at the moment. The anger and grief burned fresh within her, as they always did when her subconscious mind took her back to that pool.

"My apologies, Elizabeth. I didn't want to wake you, but...you screamed." Reddington paused, perhaps waiting for her to share her nightmare. That certainly wasn't happening.

"Did your man get anything useful out of Wyatt?" The strange old man with the oxygen tank hadn't been exactly what Liz had pictured when Jacob had mentioned an 'interrogation specialist' but she trusted Reddington's judgement, at least in this particular arena.

"That's nothing you need to concern yourself with. You should go home. Let me take care of this."

"No way in Hell. This guy came after me and I want some answers." When Reddington had dropped her off all those years ago he'd told her he won't be in contact, unless it was absolutely necessary. He'd said something about protecting her normal life. That had been fine with Liz, but now that Reddington's life was affecting hers, she did not want to sit on the sidelines.

"You were targeted because of your association with me. Wyatt was sent to determine how we are connected. To involve you more would place you at even greater risk. The safest course of action would be for you return to your life as though nothing had happened." Was he kidding? How was she supposed to return to her life, knowing she was been hunted? How could she pretend things were normal knowing that her every move was being watched?

"You want me to stay of this? Then get rid them." He couldn't have it both ways. She was either a part of this or she wasn't. Liz crossed her arms and waited for a response. Reddington frowned, needing no explanation as to which 'them' she referred to.

"Elizabeth, I'm not getting rid of them. Your safety is of great importance to me." But apparently her emotional well-being wasn't.

"How could you use Jacob, of all people?" Hiring a stranger she could have understood, maybe, but hiring her ex to watch her was...there wasn't even a word for how messed up that was.

"It was an agreement we made long ago and given tonight's events, it's one I'm glad I honored. Ezra confessed he thought your date was clean. If Jacob hadn't been the agent assigned to you-" Liz cut Reddington off mid-sentence.

"I still would have been fine. I had the situation in hand." Jacob hadn't saved her from Wyatt, she had done that herself. That should have been enough to prove to Reddington she didn't need anyone's protection.

"Tonight perhaps, but I've been tracking this enemy of mine for some time. Whoever they are, they will not give up so easily. I won't remove your protective detail until the threat is contained." Liz glowered at the concierge of crime, reviewing her options. If Reddington wouldn't remove them, she would have to do it herself. She could call the police, but she wasn't sure what good that would do. Maybe she could get them arrested on a weapons charge, but Reddington would likely just hire someone else. He might even lock her away somewhere 'for her own good'. The smarter play was handling the immediate problem and prove to Reddington that bodyguards were unnecessary.

"Fine. So how do we contain this threat?" Reddington was silent, no doubt pondering her use of the word 'we'. "Look, I appreciate that you don't want to involve me, but I'm already involved. I attended St. Regis for almost two years. I was at the top of my class. I can help you." She waited a moment before Reddington nodded. A small victory, but it was something.

"Wyatt wasn't able to impart much. He only recently entered the employ of this enemy of mine."

"Did you get a name?"

"Berlin. Obviously it's an alias, but it's a start." Berlin. Was that the location of a headquarters? A group? A man? A woman?

"Anything else?"

"The bank where Berlin stores his money. Monarch Douglas." Now they were getting somewhere. The easiest way to weaken an enemy was to cut off his resources. Organization or individual, no one could operate in the criminal world without funds.

"Berlin keeps all his money in the one bank?" That seemed too good to be true. Smart criminals spread out their assets, in case one account was compromised.

"It's a very special bank. Only a madman would rob Monarch Douglas." Monarch Douglas? She hadn't heard of it, but then her knowledge of the criminal world was ten years outdated.

"Even the best security has it's flaws." Liz mind was already flooding with everything she'd ever studied about bank heists. It was incredible how much of it she retained after all this time. What was even more surprising was how comfortable she was with the idea of committing the robbery. She'd been a law abiding citizen for ten years. She'd worked hard to leave St. Regis behind her, and yet she was almost excited that finally she would be able to use the skills she'd learned there.

"Yes, but it wasn't the bank's security I was concerned with. The bank's clients number among the most dangerous criminals in the world. Robbing Monarch Douglas would be suicide." Gears turned in Liz's head. There had to be a way around this stumbling block. There always was.

"So we don't rob it. The object here isn't to steal money, but to bankrupt your enemy." What they need was an ally. A criminal may not risk making so many enemies, but Liz could think of at least one organization that was already an enemy of the lot of them. "Use the FBI. Leak information to them. Let them freeze the accounts. Berlin, whoever the hell he, she, or they are will be just as broke." Reddington raised his eyebrows at her suggestion.

"Monarch Douglas doubtless has countless agents on its payroll. If I approach the wrong one the result could be disastrous." Liz narrowed her eyes at Reddington. There was something about his tone that bothered her. Suddenly it hit her. He was reminding her of teacher she'd had in eighth grade. She'd enjoyed watching her student work though an answer aloud, explain their reasoning, point out problems to which she already knew the answers to. Was Reddington testing her?

"Information is your business. You're telling me you don't know one honest fed?" Reddington smiled, clearly pleased.

"I do. He's thoroughly unexceptional in most respects, but he's not the type to succumb to bribery or blackmail." Liz smiled herself. It sounded like it was time for her to make a new friend.

* * *

Damn it, was he supposed to grab the marinara or the meat sauce? Audrey had told him to write it down, but he gotten distracted and now he was screwed. He could call her, but he was already running two hours late and he didn't want her to know that he'd forgotten. He'd be forgetting a lot of things lately.

They'd been engaged for almost a year now and with all the extra hours he'd been working they were no closer to getting married than when he'd popped the question. Audrey said it was fine, but he knew she was lying.

He didn't know what to do. He'd been busting his ass, trying to make his name with the Reddington case, but the truth was the task force was no closer to catching Number 4 than they'd been three years ago. They'd had a few wins along the way, scooping up bad guys in Reddington's wake, but it'd been months since they'd been doing anything but chasing their tails. If something didn't change soon the task force would be disbanded.

"Donald Ressler?" Ressler snapped back into reality and turned to see a woman in a baseball cap smiling politely at him. He examined her closely, but nothing from her short brown hair to her bright blues eyes was familiar.

"Sorry, do we know each other?" Ressler doubted it, given the formal way she said his name, but you never knew.

"No. I have information for you regarding Raymond Reddington." Son of a bitch. Ressler's hand instinctively went for his weapon, but the woman merely smiled and raised her hands in a non-threatening manner. Her outfit; shorts and a figure hugging t-shirt; made it fairly obvious she wasn't carrying a gun.

"Unless you're interested in ending up in a cell, I'd turn around and walk right back out the way you came." No one outside the Bureau should know about the task force, and this woman did not give off law enforcement vibes.

"I'm not threatening you Agent Ressler, I'm offering to help you. As I understand it this isn't the first time you've received intel from anonymous sources. Brussels? 2008? The train station?" How the hell did she know about that?! That mission was classified. Who was this woman?

"I don't know what-" The woman waved a hand at him cutting him off.

"I'm talking about. Sure. I'm just going to leave you this," he tensed as her hand disappeared into her pocket, but when she removed it the only thing in her palm was a flash drive. She set it on the grocery store's shelf.

"I'm not taking that. If you really have credible information there are proper procedures you need to follow."

"I'm not really a tip line kind of girl. Take the drive or don't, it's your choice. You don't know me and you have no reason to trust my word, but you have to ask yourself, 'What do you have to lose?'" The woman turned and started to walk away only to pause and turn back.

"Meat sauce."

"What?"

"When I approached you looked like you we trying to decide which sauce to get." She gestures to his cart, "With fettuccine you're supposed to use meat sauce. Also don't cook it all the way through. Wait until it's still a little crunchy, strain it, then let it finish cooking in the sauce. It helps the noodles absorb the favor." Ressler blinked at the unsolicited advice. What was this woman's deal?

"What are you, some kind of chef?" She actually laughed at the suggestion.

"No. The opposite really, I'm a terrible cook. Someone once taught me about pasta, though so...Anyway, see you around Agent Ressler." With a short wave she disappeared around the corner of the aisle.

Ressler was rooted to the spot. Should he follow her? Arrest her? He shook his head. She hadn't done anything illegal. True she had access to classified information, but she hadn't leaked any to the general public and he had no way of proving how she'd obtained such knowledge.

He turned back to the shelf where the flash drive was resting. What kind of information was in there? A silver bullet to bring down Reddington? Unlikely. Everything about this situation stunk. The woman hadn't asked for anything, which worried him. Cops got information from criminals all the time, but there was almost always bargaining involved. Nothing is free. People who think they can get something for nothing always ended up getting nothing for something.

The woman had brought up the Brussels tip. She was right, that had been even more anonymous than this little cloak and dagger situation. He still had no idea who'd supplied that information, but it had been accurate. Clearly they'd been an enemy of Reddington's and they'd hoped the FBI would remove him from play. Maybe the woman represented the same party. The guessing was driving him crazy.

Making a decision, he reached into his cart, and pulled out the bag of apples. He untwisted the tie, dumped out the fruit and used the plastic bag to pick up the drive. At the very least he could get some fingerprints, figure out who he was dealing with. He should see about getting the store's surveillance footage as well. He turned back to the shelf, sighed and grabbed both the meat sauce and the marinara. He was too experienced to take anything on faith.

* * *

 **Thanks for your patience, especially my Tumblr friends whom I've been promising an update to for quite some time! I hope you enjoyed it!**


	20. Done

Something Jacob had come to realise after over a decade of international travel was that city traffic was hell. Warsaw was no exception. Sitting there at a standstill waiting for the car ahead to inch forward, was more painful than a few interrogation techniques he'd withstood over the years. It didn't help that the only thing Jacob had to distract himself with was the voices of the Feds whose car he was following. Shortly after the agents Jacob was able to get close enough to force pair Agent Ressler's phone. He'd remote turned the phone's speaker into a hot mic and thus were now privy to the partners private conversation.

 **"I don't like this."** Special Agent Robert 'Bobby' Janika. Senior Agent on the Reddington task force and partner to Special Agent Donald Ressler, or as Jacob had mentally been referring to him, 'The Boy Scout'. His dossier was so clean it squeaked. People that honest made Jacob uneasy.

 **"The information on Campo was good."** Captain America was correct. Knowing the FBI would be suspicious of any unverified tip, Liz had suggested Reddington fork over a 'taste' of easily confirmed intelligence that would earn some goodwill. He'd offered up Floriana Campo, a philanthropist whose foundation was supposedly created to combat human trafficking. As it turned out, the bitch was in fact the head of the Eberhart Cartel, the largest sex trafficking organization in existence. Liz hadn't taken the news well. The woman had apparently been a hero of hers.

 **"Doesn't mean this is. Feels like we're being used."** Ezra snorted, causing Jacob to glance over at him.

"How's that for gratitude? We hand them a huge win, and they still complain." Jacob couldn't decide which was worse, listening to the Feds or listening to Ezra's commentary. He'd hoped the Brit would continue the silent soldier routine he'd adopted upon Reddington's arrival at the watch post, but once the boss was out of earshot, he'd started up again.

"They are being used." Jacob forced himself not to glance back at Liz, who'd apparently returned to her position by the grated door between the front seat and the back of the van. Liz had peeled herself away to make a private phone call, though both Jacob and Ezra knew to whom she'd been speaking.

"To their benefit. This will be a career making bust for these two government flunkies." Jacob couldn't believe he was siding with Ezra, but the temptation to engage in any kind of conversation with Liz was too great to resist.

"I'm just saying I don't blame them for feeling manipulated." Was supposed to be directed at him? Jesus, he'd explained and apologized. What else did she want from him?

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but this was your plan, wasn't it?" The question was rhetorical. Reddington had made it clear to both himself and Ezra that Liz was lead operative on this mission, in addition to being their protectee. A recipe for disaster if Jacob had ever heard one.

"Any updates from the boss?" Liz shifted her gaze to Ezra, who was smirking at her in the rearview mirror.

"He's not my boss. And no, Reddington's got nothing new to report." Jacob had been shocked that Concierge of Crime hadn't insisted on accompanying them, given the importance of the assignment. Did that show trust, or was he up to something?

"Or if he does, he doesn't feel like sharing." The man might be employing Jacob, and genuinely care about Liz, but that didn't mean Jacob trusted him.

The rental car containing Agents Ressler and Janika pulled up at in front of Kaja Tomack's apartment building as expected. Ezra made the turn to circle around the block.

"Like you're one to talk about full disclosure." This was getting ridiculous. Ezra pulled into a space a respectable distance from the building. Perfect timing.

"Ezra, watch the street. Liz, back of the van. Now." Liz glared, but moved so Jacob could exit the cab, into the back.

"I'll just be here. Doing my job." Jacob closed the door on Ezra's muttering, and secured the second privacy door so they couldn't be overheard.

"Isn't this a little unprofessional, Jacob?" That was rich, coming from her.

"I'm not the one making passive aggressive swipes. Clearly our conversation at the watch post wasn't enough to satisfy you." It sure hadn't satisfied him. She'd called him a coward. He was guilty of a lot of things, but cowardice wasn't one of them.

"So, what you think an apology is going to-" Jacob cut her off mid-sentence. Liz had had her say. It was his turn to talk.

"I'm done apologizing. I've said I was sorry hurting you and I meant it, but I'm not going to pretend that if I had to do it all over again I wouldn't do the exact same thing. Everything I have done since the moment we have met has been to protect you. I betrayed the closest thing I've ever to a father for you. I've stayed in this life for you."

Jacob had anticipated how much it would hurt to parted be from Liz and he hadn't been wrong about that. What he hadn't foreseen was how much knowing her would impact his ability to do his job. Decisions that he had been able to make with ruthless practicality were no longer simple. His actions haunted him after a mission had ended. He'd started seeing targets as Liz might see them, as people with lives and families. She'd broken him. He was no longer the operative he'd once been.

"What are you talking about?"

"I paid off my debt to McCready four years after you left. I could have been long retired, living on my boat, a world away from this shit by now!" Would it kill her to acknowledge that he had sacrificed for her? That he was trying to do right by her?

"Are you seriously trying to claim that had anything to do with me?!" Liz's expression was unadulterated disbelief.

"It had EVERYTHING to do with you! I stayed because I knew one day you might need me, and like or not, you do!" Berlin was just the tip of the iceberg. If one of Reddington's enemies had figured out she was important to him, others would as well. They'd come for her, it was only a matter of time.

"I don't need you. I have never needed you. Using me as an excuse for why you're still one of McCready's puppets is pathetic. You love this life, the deception and manipulation, because it gives you control over everyone around you. It is as natural to you as breathing. You wouldn't last five minutes in the real world, because you aren't real. You never have been."

Jacob felt like he'd been punched in the gut. Liz calling him not real was a thousand times worse than her calling him a coward. In those two sentence she had voiced every doubt he'd ever had about himself, since the moment he'd realized he wanted out of the spy game. Those words from her were beyond cruel, because she'd been the only one to ever tell him that he could be more.

"You don't need me? Fine. When this job is finished, and the accounts are frozen, I'm gone." Let her take her chances with Reddington on her own. He was done.

The door banged open, revealing a grim looking Ezra. "We've got a problem." Ezra pointed out at the windshield. Jacob looked out in time to see men in kevlar were running into Kaja's building. That was faster than expected.

"Masks." Jacob's hand shot into his pockets, removed two ski masks, and tossed one to Liz. She caught it easily with her left hand while dialing on her cell with her right. Jacob hoped for the Boy Scout's sake he wasn't the type to let unknown numbers go to voicemail.

"A hit team is on it's way up! Grab your partner and Kaja and get the hell out of there!" Jacob grabbed two assault rifles and threw open the van door, knowing Liz would be right behind him. He could hear her arguing with the Fed as they raced across the street and into the lobby of the apartment building. The security guard and desk clerk were both lying dead on the marble floor.

"-West stairwell in one minute!" Liz hung up and shoved the phone in her pocket. When they got to the door Liz yanked it open and Jacob tossed her her weapon. He wondered as they pounded up the stairs whether or not Agent Ressler would trust Liz at her word. If he didn't, then it was likely the Fed would be dead by the time Jacob and Liz reached the top floor. As conscientious rule followers, Ressler and Janika were both unarmed on foreign soil. They wouldn't stand a chance.

Suddenly Jacob heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire in the stairwell. A few more turns and suddenly he and Liz were a flight away from Kaja, Agent Janika, and Agent Ressler. The fleeing targets froze on the stairs, but Liz continued to charge.

"I'll cover the rear! Move!" A fresh shower of bullets seemed to yank the trio out of their indecisive state and Liz pushed by them and returned fire. Jacob had no choice but to the usher the group down the stairs as fast as he could, trying not to focus on the sounds of ricocheting metal. It wasn't until they were all in the van speeding away from the apartment building that he spared a dirty look at Liz. Naturally she ignored it and to his horror, pulled off her ski mask.

"Anybody hit?" Agent Janika raised his eyebrows, but shook his head, as did Kaja, Agent Ressler grimaced.

"In the arm. It's just a graze." Liz rolled her eyes and went for the first aid supplies.

"I'll patch you. Lose the jacket, roll up your sleeve." Agent Ressler made no move to comply.

"Tell me is this Florence Nightingale routine that supposed to make us trust you?" Liz glanced over her shoulder at the fed, then re-focused on gathering the appropriate supplies.

"No. What's supposed to make you trust me is the fact we just saved both your lives. But if you'd rather your partner bandage you, be my guest." She tossed the tape, gauze and disinfectant to Janika.

"Or you just staged the whole thing to kidnap all three of us. Pretty convenient the worse this 'hit squad' did was give Donnie a graze." So Janika was also going to be an ungrateful pain in the ass. That was good to know. Liz smiled in a way that Jacob knew from experience was a distinctly bad omen and turned her eyes to the account manager.

"I imagine they were afraid of accidentally shooting her. Isn't that right, Kaja? I'm curious, do you care at all about those two innocent people dead in the lobby of your building?" The blonde banker probably didn't realize it, but she was on dangerous ground with Liz. The defiant stare was doing nothing to help her cause.

"I didn't call those men." No, but that didn't exactly mean she was innocent. According to Reddington 'The Formula' as this woman was referred to, lived in relative luxury under 24 hour surveillance. She knew the business she was in keeping track of the bank accounts for the criminal underworld. She knew the fate of anyone who came to her door asking questions.

"But you knew they would be coming. And you knew what would happen to Agents Ressler and Janika when they did." Both agents had halted their respect activities as patient and first aid giver to stare at Kaja. The woman raised her chin, but refused to meet either of their eyes.

"I have nothing to say." Liz nodded as though she approved.

"That's smart. Easier not incriminate yourself that way. Though I should tell you, these nice agents legally can't arrest you and we both know the locals won't be offering them any help. No one's going to be holding you accountable for your sins today." She was really working the guilt angle. Jacob wondered if the prodding was having the intended effect.

"Self-righteous words from a kidnapper and a thief." The woman was certainly on the defensive. Maybe those psych classes Liz was taking were actually useful for something.

"Kidnapper? Me? No. You're not being kidnapped. I have no interest in extorting account information from you. As you know, only a fool would rob Monarch Douglas. I have a moral obligation to ensure Agents Ressler and Janika make it safety out of the country. It is after all my fault that they're here. But if you want us to stop and let you out, that's your choice. I think that would be a terrible mistake on your part, but it's your life." It was a nice pivot, he had to give her that. First the guilt trip, then she dangled the carrot.

"Why a mistake?" Looks like Liz got a nibble.

"You're a prisoner, Kaja, and we both know it. I'm sure it seemed like a good deal at the time. The money, apartment, being highly valued for your gift. But you paid for all of it with your integrity, your privacy, and your freedom. These men can give you that back. All of it." Brilliant. She was absolutely brilliant. Liz had framed Kaja's betraying her employers and putting a target on her own back into an act of self-interest and righteous at the same time.

"We can offer full immunity. Witness protection." Apparently Agent Ressler knew a cue when he heard it.

"And how would you purpose to get me safety out the country?" Jacob wasn't surprised Kaja addressed Liz and not the federal agent. Neither Ressler, nor Janika looked thrilled about that, but they had the sense not to say anything.

"A certain plane will be at a certain location in a little less than three hours. We have an off grid site to wait until it arrives. We can protect you, if you let us." Liz's face was the perfect projection of sincerity. She was truly compelling like this. Liz would have made one hell of spy, if things had gone differently.

"Alright. You have a deal." Jacob felt a strange, warm feeling inside his chest as he looked at Liz that he couldn't quite explain. He'd been furious with her less than thirty minutes ago. He'd hurt by her words and then later angry she'd charged off and put herself at risk. Now he was...what? Happy about her success? Proud. That was it. He was proud of her, proud of the way she'd dealt with Kaja. Proud of the woman she'd grown into: brave, competent, and strong. She was right. She didn't need him. Probably never had.

 **I'm so sorry it took me this long to finish this chapter. I had the chapter nearly done, decided I hated it, deleted it, and developed a crippling case of writer's block. The good news is that I have a pretty firm idea of the next few chapters, so my next chapter should up next weekend. Thanks for bearing with me! Also sorry about the angst!**


	21. Trust

The train was lit solely by the light that slipped through the cracks of its wood panels. Rusting iron hooks dangled from the ceiling, clinking softly against each other at the container rattled down the tracks. It felt a little claustrophobic, all six of them stuck in there together. Reddington's contact had assured Liz that this was the safest route to travel towards their ultimate destination. Safe it may have been, but comfortable it was definitely not. Their venue had not helped ease the tense mood shared by the car's occupants.

Ezra and Jacob had positioned themselves at the two doors of the compartment, both of them holding assault rifles at the ready. Neither had removed their masks, which hadn't exactly created an atmosphere of trust. Liz had opted to downgrade to a semi-automatic, tucked into the back of her pants. The Feds were sitting on either side of Kaja, no doubt preparing to throw themselves in front of her in the event of an ambush. Neither man had been pleased when Liz had denied them their own weapons. She felt a twinge of guilt about that, but Reddington had been very specific about letting the FBI examine his property. Apparently the concierge of crime didn't want to risk the weapons ultimately being traced back to his supplier, who according to him was a delightful old friend and gifted pastry chef.

"I need some air." Kaja's voice broke the quiet, causing everyone to stare at her. After a second Agent Janika stood.

"I think I'll join you."

Kaja and Janika made their way to the door to the next car, currently being blocked by Jacob. "Hey, buddy, do you mind?" Jacob didn't respond, just looked over the man's shoulder at Liz for permission. He was letting her make a decision. How unlike him.

"It's fine. Go with them, just to be safe." Jacob hesitated just for a moment, causing her to press her lips together. "Go." Jacob finally nodded, opened the door and motioned Kaja and Agent Janika through.

"Thanks so much." Liz didn't blame Janika for his sarcasm. She would have felt pissed if she was him. It sucked not being in control.

"So you're the boss around around here, huh?" Liz smiled sweetly at the surly Agent Ressler. It was cute that he thought his disapproval affected her in any way.

"Just until we touch down in D.C. After that it's totally your show." As a way of concealing Reddington's involvement Liz had recommended he call in a favor from someone who couldn't immediately be connected to him. Apparently today they'd be flying courtesy of an old friend named 'Omar'.

"Why do I have trouble believing that?" In Liz's opinion, because he had a healthy dose of skepticism. If she was in his position, she wouldn't trust her either. In this case, however his fears were unfounded.

"I don't blame you for harboring some misgivings about me, Agent Ressler, but I haven't lied to you. Why don't you relax, let someone else shoulder the burden of responsibility for a change." Had she concealed things? Yes. Did she have a hidden agenda? Yes. But had she lied? No.

"Relax? Yeah, sure, why not? It's not like I'm unarmed, on foreign soil, being hunted by international criminals working in concert with local law enforcement. Oh yeah, and my only ride out of here depends on the goodwill of your mystery employer." Was he baiting her? Cute.

"What makes you think I have an employer? I thought I was the boss."

"In this car? Yeah. But when we arrived, first thing you did was go into the next room to make a phone call."

"I was checking to make sure there wasn't a hitch in our travel arrangements."

"Then why do it where my partner and I can't hear what you're saying? No, someone else is pulling your strings, Elvis." Reddington may have been a little overly critical in his assessment of Agent Ressler's intelligence. She couldn't resist letting out a small chuckle at her new nickname. She had so hoped he'd dust the drive for prints.

"I hope you weren't too angry about my little joke." Reddington had insisted Agent Ressler have no evidence he could trace to her at a later date, and thus, he'd put her in touch with a man who supplied all manner of identity concealing merchandise. He'd given her carte blanche on any set of fake fingerprints she wanted. When the strange little fellow had show her his celebrity collection she hadn't been able to resist the Presley prints. She had wondered if it was a case of art imitating life or life imitating art.

"Not at all. Just added ''Gone In Sixty Seconds" fan to your criminal profile. For what little those damn things are worth." Clearly Agent Ressler didn't respect profilers, which was a definite strike against him. On the other hand, he had excellent taste in movies. Liz supposed no one was perfect.

"I'm not a criminal Agent Ressler." Ten years of living in the real world, being a model citizen, and working for the damn government had to count for something.

"Really? You got a legal permit for the assault rifle you were firing early?" That's what he wanted to come at her with after she saved his ass, along with his partner's? Please.

"You mean when I was shooting at the people trying to kill you? Maybe not. But consider Agent Ressler, why do you think I'm not wearing a mask right now?" Ressler snorted, not to be impressed by a little thing like her saving his life. If the the man were any more by the book, he'd have his own freaking how-to manual.

"Simple. It's a tactic to generate trust." Okay, being fair, that wasn't 100% inaccurate. No need to mention that though.

"It's because once we get back to D.C., you are never going to see me again. My record is squeaky clean and I have no intention of sullying it any time soon." Ressler jerked his head at the door, from which Janika, Kaja, and Jacob had yet to reemerge.

"So is hers. Doesn't make her innocent. Or you." Mr. Sanctimoniousness wasn't happy about working with people with less that pristine pasts. Well, too damn bad. They couldn't all be self-righteous Dudley Do-Rights.

"People make stupid choices. I'd like to think our lives don't have to be defined by them. Look at Kaja. She's about to bring down to bring down some of the most evil, dangerous people in the world. She'll never feel safe again. You don't think that's worth anything?" Ressler scowled a little clearly not liking having to admit the contribution Kaja would be making to the cause of law and order. Eventually he grunted in concession.

"You did good work with her. A lot of scumbags will be waking up tomorrow with an empty bank account because of you." Liz couldn't help but smile. The complement could not have been easy to give, and Liz was pretty sure she didn't fully deserve it.

"Nothing you didn't start I'm sure." The speed the hit team arrived, their brazen action, only made sense if the people watching Kaja thought Ressler and Janika were getting through to her.

"No. She was stonewalling us. I couldn't get her to admit shit, let alone flee the country." Something was tickling the back of Liz's mind. Either Ressler was being very modest or something strange was going on.

"Someone must have thought otherwise. Or else why..." Liz's voice trailed of as an unwelcome thought hit her.

At that moment Kaja, Jacob, and Janika returned from their break. She strode over to the accounts manager leaving a confused looking Ressler in her wake.

"Kaja, you have hyperthymesia, correct? Super heightened autobiographical memory?" Kaja's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Yes, that right."

"Did you a good look at the bodies in the lobby?" The banker's expression darkened considerably.

"What are you trying to do? Give me another guilt trip? Because if you are-"

"No, it's not that. I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important." Liz hoped she was wrong, but the pieces were beginning to join together in a compelling manner. Kaja sighed and closed her eyes.

"Bullets were flying. My focus was the exit. The guard. I saw him in my peripheral visual about 15 feet to my left for maybe a second."

"Was it your usual guard?" Both Feds, Ezra and Jacob had turned their attention to her.

"I think so."

"Think so or know so?" She probably sounded like a bitch, but Liz didn't care at the moment. If she'd been played, she wanted to be damn sure she knew it.

"Height. Weigh. Skin tone. Hair cut. Hair color. It all matches." Maybe this was just paranoia, maybe the monitor from Monarch Douglas overreacted. Human beings could be unpredictable. Not everything had to be a conspiracy.

"Are you absolutely sure? Any detail that doesn't line up?" Liz was surprised to hear Jacob chime in. He hadn't said a word to her or anyone since their fight in the van. Liz tried to re-direct her mind, but it was too late. The look on Jacob's face when she'd told him that she called him 'not real' had burned itself into her brain.

"I'm trying." With effort Liz pulled herself back into the moment, where Jacob and Kaja were presently glaring at each other. He certainly had a way with people.

"I thought you could remember everything." If Jacob kept going, he was going to get himself slapped.

"Everything I've seen, yes, my memory isn't a damn camcorder. I can't zoom in and it's not like you're giving perimeters of what to look for-" Kaja paused mid-rant and tilted her head to the side, "His right hand. The building's regular security guard just stop wearing his wedding band six days ago. There's was a slight discoloration on his ring finger when I saw him last night. He didn't have it when...we passed him." Liz closed her eyes. That son of a bitch. "He could have gotten bronzer. Or the building could have hired new security. But why would they kill him? Why would the bank kill any of them? I always assumed they were on the bank's payroll." Kaja was a smart woman. It certainly wasn't to Liz's advantage that successfully saw the logic train to its conclusion.

"Eliminate the witnesses to the murder of two FBI agents?" Ezra was chiming in now as well. Perfect. She studied him, wondering at his motivation. Her eyes flicked over to Jacob, who subtly shook his head. So Jacob had reached the same conclusion she had. She wasn't surprised. They'd always had a good mutual understanding of each other's thinking.

"Why kill two United States Special Agents, right in their own backyard? Draws attentions. Unless there was a real chance we were going somehow get Kaja back to the United States, why risk it?" And now the feds were playing along as well. Great. Why hadn't she had the sense to leave it alone?

"Maybe they didn't trust her." Jacob was trying to walk back the damage she done. If she was a good a good agent, she'd let him. Operatives did whatever the mission required. Trouble was was she wasn't a good operative anymore, just someone who was sick and tired of being lied to. The phone in her pocket started to ring. Speak of the devil.

Earlier she'd gone into a private car to avoid the federal agents overhearing anything that might be traced back to Reddington. At the moment he wasn't exactly her first concern. Kaja, Agents Ressler and Janika, they all had the right to know who was pulling their strings.

"You son of a bitch." She didn't care what he had done for her in the past, he had no right to screw with her like this. She turned her back on the rest of car's occupants, wanting to focus all of her attention on the bastard on the other end of the call.

"Elizabeth, you're in danger." There was an urgency in his voice that genuine, but she already been fooled by him once. For all she knew this was just the next part of his con.

"I know what you've done." It was a set up. Agent Janika's accusation had been spot on, she just hadn't known it. Reddington must have had his second team following them. Those 'bodies' were almost certainly members of the 'hit team' playing dead in order to sell the charade. He'd created a fake threat, knowing Liz would warn the federal agents and try to protect them. Reddington had masterfully crafted a scenario where Kaja and two federal agent had put themselves in his hands, at least by proxy.

"Agent Janika can not be trusted. You need to restrain him now." She wondered what new angle he was working now. Maybe he was aiming to get Kaja to lose faith in the FBI. Maybe, despite what he'd told her, he was planning to rob Monarch Douglas, or at least drain a few of the bank accounts.

"'Not to be trusted?.' That's rich, coming from you." Elizabeth suddenly felt a hand at the back of her pants, removing the weapon she'd stowed there. She spun to find herself facing the barrel of her own pistol.


	22. Limits

"Drop your weapons, or I put one in her skull." Ressler felt like he was trapped in some kind of hellish nightmare. Bobby, his best friend, had snatched the gun from their mysterious informant and was currently aiming it directly between her eyes. The masked mercenaries had turned their weapons on Ressler's partner. Neither complied with Bobby's demand.

"Bobby, what the hell?!" Had Ressler missed something? Had Bobby worked out that they were being lead into some kind of trap? He took a half step towards his friend, only to have Bobby shake his head at him.

"Don't move, brother. Hey thugs 1 and 2: I said drop the rifles or she dies!" It was all too much to process. What in the hell was happening?! Why didn't Bobby want his help? A horrific thought dawned in Ressler's mind: Could Bobby be working for Monarch Douglas? Had his best friend been paid off?

"Do not drop those weapons. If you do he will take Kaja and kill everyone else in this car. The second he drops me, drop him." The woman sounded remarkably calm, given that she had just ordered her men to let her die. Was she right? Was that really Bobby's plan? An hour ago Ressler would have said it was impossible. Now, looking at him use an unarmed woman as a hostage, he wasn't as sure.

"Agent Janika, take a beat and think through your next move very carefully." The voice that filled the car came from the phone in the woman's hand. It was one he instantly recognized as the object of their manhunt.

"My, oh my, the man himself. The great concierge of crime. Thank you so much for your concern, but I have thought this one through. In an hour's time a hopefully wiser Kaja will get back to her job and I'll be heading back to the States an even wealthier man than I arrived." Bobby's frank confession yanked Ressler out of the stupor his mind had been sucked into. Ressler may not have understood what was happening with the woman, or with Reddington, but he definitely understood the betrayal.

"How much are they paying Bobby? How much does honor go for these days?" Janika was nothing more than Tommy Fucking Markin the sequel.

"I'm afraid, Agent Ressler, your partner lost his honor quite some time ago. He's been on my payroll for years. Just one of many sources inside the federal government. But I confess I made a mistake. I underestimated you, Agent Janika. Or should I say Tensei?" Ressler's surprise at being directly addressed by number four on the most wanted list lasted only a moment before the impact of the criminal's words sunk in. Reddington's informant. Tensei, the rising power in the heroin empire formerly run by Mako Tanida. It was impossible. This was Bobby. His best friend. His mentor. Senior agent in charge. Bobby's eyes flicked over to Ressler's, before quickly refocusing on the girl. It was just long enough for Ressler to read the shame there. It was true. Everything Reddington said was true.

"Hang up!" Janika's hostage looked like she was more likely to spit in his face that do anything he said.

"Don't be hasty Agent Janika. I understand why you can't allow Kaja to disclose the account information, but if you harm my people in your attempts to return her to Monarch Douglas, I will come for you." Reddington was hoping to negotiate? Would Bobby go for it? If he didn't Ressler was going to have to do something. Reddington's people or not, he couldn't let his partner massacre them.

"And if I let them go, you'll just let bygones be bygones? You forget, Reddington, I know your reputation too well for that." It was true that Reddington didn't let betrayals stand. Was the Concierge of Crime trying to buy time?

"My reputation should tell you that I view everything in life as negotiable. I protect my contractors. Failure to do so hurts my business and I'm always interested in the bottom line. Let them go and your transgressions stay between us. I won't pursue you, or go after Kaja until you've claimed your finders' fee from the bank. Do we have an agreement?" Ressler held his breath for a moment as Bobby considered Reddington's offer. It was generous one, if number 4 was telling the truth. It was probably Bobby's only way out of the Mexican standoff he'd created.

"If you tell your people to drop their weapons, we'll have a deal." There was a long pause from the other end of the line. Just when Ressler was certain Reddington had hung up his voice once again filled the car.

"Stand down, all of you." One of the masked men immediately lowered his gun, but the other kept it steadfast on Bobby.

"I'll lower my gun when he lowers his." Dissension among Reddington's people. The was a first. Ressler had interviewed countless numbers of Reddington's lackeys and they generally preferred long prison sentences to turning on their boss.

"Elizabeth, tell him to drop his gun." For a second Reddington's utterance made no sense until the woman Bobby held at gunpoint spoke.

"No, he's right. Janika's a traitor to his own partner. His word can't be trusted. If he's lying now then everyone here will die, not just me." That probably was not the kind of assistance Reddington had been looking for. Bobby looked like he'd reached the end of his patience.

"I'm counting back from five. When I get to one either your gun is on the ground or she is. Five, four, three-" Ressler was preparing to launch himself at his partner when the masked man's weapon finally dropped. A second later the assault rifle of the hold-out was on the floor. He'd given up his weapon to save the woman. Elizabeth. Reddington had called her 'Elizabeth.' She didn't look grateful for being spared. Pissed was more like it.

"How the hell you graduated from the Academy beyond me." The man didn't say anything, just raised his hands in surrender.

"Everybody on your knees, hands behind your head." Was this it? Was Bobby about to violate his deal with Reddington and kill everyone as Elizabeth had predicted?

"So this is how things end between us? My best friend turns out to be my own personal Tommy Markin?" For the first time since Bobby had grabbed the gun he looked Ressler full in the face. His expression wasn't hard or spiteful, but pained, like Ressler's accusation had hurt him.

"This ain't that Donnie. I'm not going to kill you." Ressler snorted at the wounded tone. Bobby was liar and traitor. The earnestness didn't suit him at all.

"So what, you think you can bribe me to look the other way?" Bobby was insane if he thought Ressler could be paid off. He had dedicated his life to the law and his partner knew that.

"God I wish I could, but all friendships have limits. I know yours all too well. You'd never bend your code, not even for me. The Boy Scout. Unfortunately I have my limits to, and I ain't going to prison." Ressler could hear the fevered desperation in his partner voice. He didn't blame him. Dirty cops did the hardest time there was.

"We'll see about that." If Ressler lived through this he was going to dedicate his life to making sure Bobby paid for his crimes. Reddington could wait.

"What you don't understand is that I'm not the dirty cop. You are. I got the bank statements to prove it. Money that can be traced to an account of Reddington's. Trust me, it's all there. I've been worrying this day might come for quite a while. You're a smart guy, Donnie. I knew eventually you'd get suspicious about how Reddington always seemed to stay ahead of us." Suddenly so much of the past few years became clear. Reddington wasn't some kind of omniscient Nostradamus. Bobby had been betraying them at every turn. All this time they worked together, the gun fights they'd survived, the conciliatory drinks they'd had, and none of it mattered.

Mind reeling, it took Ressler seconds to realize that Bobby was still talking "-passports and two million cash. You can take Audrey and go to some nice tropical country with no-extradition. Two million dollars. That's more than you'd see in a you're still my brother Donnie. That hasn't changed." Was Bobby serious? He thought two million dollars made up for betraying Ressler and framing for him? Rage boiled inside Ressler's chest.

"Fuck you. Fuck your money. The only way you're stopping me from going back and telling them everything is if you kill me. Like you say, I'm a Boy Scout. I'll take my chances with the system." Janika's expression shifted from hopeful to grim.

"You going to take Audrey's chances too?" Ressler went cold. Audrey. The son of bitch was threatening the woman who'd made him dinner last Sunday.

"If you touch her-" Bobby suddenly exploded with anger, as though he had any right to it.

"I don't want to Donnie, so don't make me! Don't push me!" It was surreal seeing Bobby like this. The FBI agent Ressler had thought he'd known was an illusion. Tensei, the head of a heroin empire was the reality.

Bobby reached into his jacket, removed a set of handcuffs, and tossed them to Elizabeth. "One on your wrist, one on Kaja's. Do it or I kill them." What was Bobby up to now? He'd told Reddington he was taking Kaja and leaving his people behind. If that were true then why was he securing the banker to Reddington's contractor?

"What are you doing?" Why was Bobby violating his deal with Reddington? They both knew what happened to people who broke deals with him.

"Taking some insurance. She's important to Reddington. He's not going come after me while I have her." As Bobby turned to address Ressler, Ressler caught a look shot at him by the bodyguard who hadn't wanted to give up his gun. He was going to make a move.

"You're an idiot of you think that. Nothing matters to Reddington except his reputation. If you break a deal with him he can't allow you live. It's that simple." The woman had guts, Ressler had to give her that. He needed to do something, draw Bobby's focus, which hopefully would give Reddington's man a greater chance of success. .

"Don't think so. You think I didn't notice the way those two are around you? The way they're constantly checking your location. Maintaining peripheral awareness? Why do you think I think I pointed the gun at you, and not one of them. Reddington might want Tomjack, but not as much as he wants you. That's why both of you are coming with me."

Ressler slowly pushed himself off his knees and stood a faced his partner. Bobby swung the gun to face him, as Ressler hoped he would. "No, they're not Bobby."

"How exactly you going to stop me, Donnie?" Ressler said a silent apology to Audrey.

"I'm not." Ressler's deliberate look over Bobby's shoulder had his partner starting to turn as the masked bodyguard rammed him in the torso. Ressler dove to the side to avoid collision with the wrestling duo. He barely had time to raise his head before he heard a gunshot. Ressler's eyes flew to the struggling men, both of whom seemed to have frozen with the pistol held between them. A second later the masked man fell back to the floor, clutching his stomach.

"NO!" Elizabeth's scream had barely escaped her lungs before a barrage of bullets took down the still standing Bobby. Ressler's vision tunneled as he stared at the fallen form of his best friend. A million memories rushed through his mind. Bobby telling war stories to the team. Bobby on his couch, watching the game. Bobby pressing a beer in his hand, telling him not to be so damn hard on anger and the betrayal vanished and for a moment all he felt was grief.

Ressler crawled over, knowing it was pointless, but needing to none the less. Bobby chest was gushing blood. Ressler put his hands over the wounds, despite knowing it was a futile effort. His eyes fell on the pained face of his friend. Blood was trickling of Bobby's mouth as he struggled to breath.

"Donnie...Sorry..." Movement slowed to a halt and Bobby's eyes became unseeing. His partner was gone. Ressler sucked in a deep breath and closed his partner's eyes.

"Jacob! Stay with me!" Ressler turned, disoriented, to see the woman kneeling over her fallen bodyguard. Kaja was looking uncomfortable next to her, handcuffed together as they were. Ressler had the hazy thought he should do something about that. He dug through his partner's pockets, until he found the key.

He didn't think Reddington's agent even noticed when he'd freed her from the restraints, but Kaja gave him a small but grateful smile. Elizabeth had eyes for no one but her dying companion. Tears were pouring out her eyes. She seemed so different than she had starring her own potential death in the face. For the first time since he'd met her she seemed genuinely afraid.

"Keep your eyes open! You're gonna be okay!" The train suddenly jerked to a stop. In a matter of seconds the doors to the adjoining car slid open and in stepped the Concierge of Crime himself, flanked by a team of bodyguards.

"Elizabeth." She looked up, her gaze unfocused at the sound of her name. When her eyes found Reddington they seem to become even more desperate.

"Help him!" The giant black bodyguard to Reddington's right stepped forward. Ressler recognized as one of Reddington's known associates. Dembe. Some kind of former freedom fighter, if Ressler remembered correctly.

"There's a doctor on my plane. We'll take him there immediately." Elizabeth nodded and moved aside, allowing the wounded man to be scooped up and carried away. She followed Dembe in an almost trance-like state, out the train car door. Reddington turned to the bank manager. "Ms. Tomjack, you may come with us or stay with Agent Ressler. The choice is yours."

Ressler wasn't exactly surprised when Kaja crossed the room to Reddington. Hard to blame her, under the circumstances. Surprise did come when the Concierge of Crime rounded on him.

"Agent Ressler, my men will escort you to the airport. I've booked you a return flight. First class." Ressler blinked. He wasn't going anywhere with Reddington's people, let alone accepting a plane ticket from him.

"No way in Hell." What was Reddington thinking, that now that Bobby was dead Ressler would become his new source in the FBI? Not a God-damned chance.

"I'm afraid I'll have to insist. I gave my word to Elizabeth that no harm would befall you as a result of our venture here." Elizabeth again. Who the hell was she, appearing out of nowhere with some kind of influence over Raymond Reddington?

"I'm not leaving Bobby here." Bobby may have been a traitor, but he's still saved Ressler's life half a dozen times over the years. Ressler owed him at least a burial.

"I'll make the arrangements to ship Agent Janika's body back to the States." Reddington paused a moment, then continued, "I've also sent evidence to your superiors that proves Agent Janika, and not you, was my informant. You won't be charged." Reddington left, leaving Ressler to try and process his parting comments. Reddington knew Bobby had been planning to frame him? How? And why would he bother clearing Ressler's name?

Ressler stared at the goons Reddington had left behind 'for his protection'. Was he really going to just acquiesce to the international criminal's plan? Leave Bobby's corpse to be handled by cleaners and smugglers? Agree to mercenaries as his temporary bodyguards? Ressler had a feeling he didn't have much of a choice. Said mercenaries would probably knock him out and send him in a cargo hold, if he offered him resistance. One thing was for certain, he was not looking forward to explaining any of this to his boss or his team.


	23. One Certainity

Elizabeth stared at the beige door that lead to the private jet's bedroom. Jacob's doctor was still in there with him. She been told, in no uncertain terms that her presence was not welcome. Though his condition was technically stable, complications from gunshots wound were common, hence the doctor's vigil.

"Drink?" A glass filled with some kind of brown liquor, top shelf no doubt, was waved in front of her face. She looked up to see Ezra standing over her.

"No." Instead of taking the hint, the British mercenary plopped down in the chair next to her.

"More for me then. Cheers." Ezra sipped the alcohol with deep relish. This was certainly a change from the Ezra who'd boarded the plane with her. He'd been very solemn as he'd forcibly stopped her from charging into the bedroom where the doctor had been operating. The bruise darkening on his left cheek had her feeling vaguely guilty.

"Should you be drinking? Aren't you technically still on the clock?" She'd learned pretty quickly into their acquaintance Ezra became quite serious and taciturn in the company of his employer. Reddington may have been a few seats down the aisle talking to Kaja, but he was in the vicinity.

"I think you're relatively safe at this particular cruising altitude. Either way, I gave Reddington my notice about twenty minutes ago." Liz blinked. This was news to her.

"You quit?" Ezra smiled and nodded, settling back in his chair.

"I did. You are a lovely and fascinating woman, but I have noticed that things around you are a bit complicated. I prefer my jobs to be simple. Besides, so long as you have him," Ezra gestured with his glass toward the door, "you don't need me. I'm like tits on a bull. Completely useless." Despite herself Liz snorted. That was a distracting image.

"I wouldn't say that. You were the one who put down Janika." Liz had tried to reach the guns herself, but moving quickly was hard when you were handcuffed to a petrified civilian.

"He was the one with the guts to tackle the gunman." Liz was only too well aware of the fact. The scene played over and over it her head on some hideous loop. The struggle. The gun shot. Jacob falling backward.

"And now he might die because of it." Die because of her, because he was trying to protect her.

"He'll make it. He's too much of a stubborn arse to die." Liz knew Ezra meant well, but she found herself getting angry. Stubbornness didn't protect anyone from anything. It hadn't saved her father, and no one was more stubborn than Sam Mulhuin.

"He shouldn't have been shot in the first place! If he hadn't moved-" Ezra held up a hand, interrupting her.

"If he hadn't moved that bastard would have taken you. We both know Jacob was never going to let that happen." Liz opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. He was right. Expecting Jacob to let her go would have been like expecting rain to fall up. It wasn't going to happen.

Ezra took a full swallow of his drink and then turned to Liz, no hint of a smile on his face. "Look, I don't know the history between the two you, but whatever it is, I hope you figure it out." Liz was spared having to respond by Reddington's sudden appearance by their seats.

"Ezra." Reddington's tone was polite, but a flick of his eyes had Ezra rising out of his chair.

"Sir." The mercenary nodded at Liz before heading to the other end of the plane. Reddington settled into the vacated seat. Liz's hands tightened on her armrest. She had hoped Reddington would have the good sense to steer clear of her, the mood she was in right now. Apparently those hopes had been for naught.

"Get everything you wanted from Kaja?" Reddington nodded as though he hadn't noticed the distinctly spiky tone of her voice.

"She's agreed to go through with the FBI's deal. You were apparently very persuasive earlier." Did he really think that flattering was going fix anything? If he did, then Reddington didn't know her very well.

"As I'm sure you were when you convinced her to help you move your money, and the money of your associates to different accounts. This has all gone exactly as you planned it. Well, apart from the minor detail of Jacob getting shot, but hey he's just the hired help. Easily replaceable, if it comes that." Liz could barely stop herself from physically shaking with anger. Unlike her anger with Jacob, this was actually justified. She really should have taken Ezra up on that drink.

"Elizabeth, I had no idea that Agent Janika posed a threat." She was going to hit him, she really was. One good hard blow to the nose.

"You knew he was dirty and you didn't tell us!" It was bad enough he'd played them all with his decoy hit squad, but not revealing important information about their targets was inexcusable. If she'd known Janika was untrustworthy, she would have been more on guard around him. He never would have gotten hold of her gun.

"I believed I had him under control. Corrupt individuals are generally easier to predict than honest ones. Agent Janika had been a reliable source for years. I didn't believe the content of his character was relevant to the mission." Reddington apparently was wrong on all counts. The concierge of crime wasn't quite infallible as he pretended to be.

"Then please explain why one of your 'reliable sources' put a bullet in Jacob." Reddington was quiet a moment, no doubt weighing the advantages of explaining himself to her against his pathological need for secrecy. .

"I hadn't realised the extent of Janika's greed and ambition. I pay very little attention to the drug trade in general and the emergence of 'Tensei', following the incarceration of Mako Tanida was something that's only recently come to my attention. Janika was quite successful in covertly taking the reigns of the heroin empire. A few months ago he opened an account with Monarch Douglas. I imagine it was the fear of exposure that lead him to act so rashly.

Not long after you took custody of Kaja, documents were released on the internet implicating Agent Ressler as being my informant. I couldn't understand why Janika would take such action against his partner, so I made a few phone calls and learned about his foray into the world's heroin market. That's when I called you." And she hadn't immediately responded to the warning. Jacob got shot because of her...No, screw that. She hadn't responded because Reddington had deceived her. It was his fault, not hers!

"Jacob is in that room with a bullet wound. He could die. That could have been prevented if you had just been honest with me. What happened to him is on you!" It felt good to have someone to blame, certainly better than sitting helplessly waiting to hear if Jacob would live or die. That left far too much time for thought, and thinking was something she really wanted to avoid at the moment.

"Yes." Yes? Red's one word answer knocked the wind out of her sails. He was supposed to argue with her, to try and justify himself. He wasn't supposed to accept responsibility.

Her owned voiced echoed inside her head. _"I don't need you. I have never needed you...You wouldn't last five minutes in the real world, because you aren't real. You never have been."_ What right did she have to accuse Reddington of hurting Jacob, when the truth was that she had hurt him the most. What's more, she'd done it deliberately.

"I said terrible things to him." Liz hadn't realised she'd blurted out her thoughts until Reddington turned his gaze to her. There was no judgement or pity in his eyes, just a willingness to listen. "Before he was shot, we had an argument and I said terrible things."

"People often say things in anger that they regret. I'm sure Jacob knew you didn't mean what you said." To her horror Liz felt tears forming in her eyes as she shook her head. He didn't understand the extent of her cruelty.

"That's just it: I don't think he did. The things I said, they were things I knew he feared about himself. That's why I said them, because in that moment I wanted to hurt him. What kind of a person does that? What kind of a person wants to hurt someone that they love?" And she did love Jacob. She knew that now, more certainly than she ever had. When he'd been lying there, fighting for his life, all she could think was how stupid she'd been. He'd come back for her after all these years and she'd wasted it by being angry with him and shoving him away.

"The kind of person who has been hurt that way themselves. You believed that somehow lashing out would ease your own suffering. It doesn't." Liz blinked. That was it exactly.

"No, it doesn't. And now he could die believing that's what I really thought of him. Die believing that I didn't care." She looked away, out the window, though there was nothing there but blackness. She'd hadn't felt this alone since Jacob had left her the first time.

Liz was surprised to suddenly feel a hand over hers. She turned back to Reddington, somewhat shocked by the gesture of commiseration. He was looking impassively straight ahead, not making eye contact. She thought about pulling her hand away, but to her own surprise, she didn't want to. It was comforting...almost familiar. Whatever the reason she cautiously turned her hand over so his hand could take hers. He did, though he still didn't look at her.

"Elizabeth, I understand how you feel. There was once a woman I loved very much. She was...my heart. My life. Sadly circumstances beyond either of our control put us at odds with one another. The last time I ever saw her, harsh words were exchanged. A few months after that, she died.

For the longest time I was tortured by the idea that she'd believed the things I'd said to her that night. That she'd left this Earth, not knowing how truly and deeply I loved her. But then, one night I realised something. She had said terrible things to me as well. I could remember them perfectly, and yet never once had they ever made me doubt her love for me. The feeling that connected us was so much deeper than any fight, even our last. If you love Jacob, truly love him, then he knows. Never doubt that."

Elizabeth didn't know how long she sat there, staring out into the night, holding Raymond Reddington's hand before she drifted of to sleep. When she awoke he had gone, though someone had thought to drape a blanket over her. When Liz caught sight of the doctor sitting a few seats down, sipping coffee she leapt up from her seat. Seeing Liz's movement the woman smiled, which was a change from the night before.

"You can see him now." Liz had reached to the door to the bedroom, before she remembered to thank the doctor. She took a deep breath and slowly turned the handle. If he was asleep she didn't want to wake him. She'd just wanted to sit near him and reassure herself he was okay.

Liz barely made it one step in the room before Jacob's eyes opened. Staring at him there, looking far paler than he should have, Liz found she couldn't form a single rational sentence.

"Hey." Terrific, the man who's been shot and had surgery on a damn plane had better command over his mental facilities that she did.

"You could have died." Well that was a subtle ice breaker. Jacob gave a short laugh, apparently finding her lack of mental filter, funny.

"From one bullet in the gut? Please. I'm McCready's golden boy, remember? I eat ammo for breakfast." He was making jokes. He'd almost died and he was making jokes about it. It was because of her. He saw she was upset and he was trying to make her laugh. He'd nearly been killed trying to protect her and from his sickbed he was worried about cheering her up. Water rushed to eyes.

"I'm so sorry."

"For what? It's not like you shot me, however sorely you've been tempted." Liz managed a weak smile as she pulled a chair next to his bed, and sat, wiping her eyes furiously. She had to pull it together. Jacob deserved an actual apology, not incoherent blubbering.

"Not for that. For before. When I said...those things. I didn't mean them. I'd just been so angry at you for so long and you came back and didn't know how to..." Jacob reached out and touched her hand. It felt very different from the feeling she'd gotten from Reddington, and yet it felt just as right.

"It's okay, babe. Everything's okay." Her fingers closed on his hand. God she had missed him.

"How is it that you're the one who's been shot, and I'm the one that's getting comforted?" Jacob smiled and squeezed her fingers.

"You're just lucky like that I guess. So...what I'd miss?"

"Reddington convinced Kaja to turn herself into the FBI. That should neutralize Berlin. Ezra quit. I decided I want you to stay with me for a while, at least until you get better."

"What?" Liz swallowed.

"Well, if I remember correctly, you hate medical professionals, and I have sick time saved up, so you could convalesce at my apartment, if you want." Liz was staring very hard down at Jacob's knuckles, deliberately avoiding his eyes. It was kind of a big leap to go from their youthful whirlwind romance to her basically inviting Jacob to live with her.

"Well, I mean that depends. Would you be personally cooking for me, because if so I might have to decline. My health is very fragile and-" Liz punched Jacob in his shoulder. He was such ass and God she loved him for it.

"If you think the fact you've just been shot means you're safe from me, you are mistaken." Jacob's ear to ear grin suggested her threat didn't frighten him much. "Well?" Jacob's playful expression became solemn.

"Are you sure?" It seemed Liz wasn't the only one nervous about this. She'd supposed they'd both be insane not to be.

"Are you sure about retiring?" She didn't want to be the reason Jacob stepped away from that life, otherwise one day he might resent her for it. If, as he claimed, he truly wanted to be done with it, then there was nothing she wanted more than to be a part of his new normal.

"Yes." Liz reached out and gently stroked his cheek.

"After ten years, you are still the only man who has ever made me feel happy and safe. I love you. Yeah, babe, I'm sure." Liz leaned and carefully pressed her lips to his. She'd honestly intended to keep it chaste, but her mouth and Jacob's had other plans. The machines Jacob was still hooked up to started to make rapid and insistent noises, causing Liz to pull back in alarm.

"Babe, honestly I'm fine. Turn the thing off and come back down here." Liz rolled her eyes at his incorrigible smile. The man was hours out of surgery, couldn't sit up straight, but thought that making out was a completely acceptable form of physical exertion.

"No way. I'm here on strictly probationary status. Your doctor will kick me out again if she thinks I'm going to make you relapse." They had still had a few hours before landing, and she wasn't going to spend them away from Jacob. It just wasn't happening.

"Again?" Liz sighed. Anyone else on the pain medications Jacob had to be on would be groggy, and unable to focus. Jacob, on the other hand, was able to zero in on the one word she really hadn't wanted him to notice.

"I may have tried to physically force my way into the 'operating room.' while you were undergoing surgery. It didn't exactly leave her with a positive impression of my calmness and sanity. She wouldn't let me in to see you until now. Can't say I blame her." Jacob's smile put the Cheshire cat's to shame.

"You were that worried about me, huh?" Liz's cheeks burned red with embarrassment. It had not been her finest hour.

"Alright, your rehabilitation starts right now. Close your eyes and get some sleep. I'll be here when you wake up." Jacob's eyes began to drop at the mere suggestion of rest. She wasn't surprised. Bullet wounds weren't exactly minor injuries and his body needed the rest.

"Promise?" His voice sounded so hopeful. She took his hand and kissed the back.

"I promise." There were so much about her life that Liz was no longer sure of. Was this the last time she'd hear from Raymond Reddington? Could her life ever be normal again after this? Did she want it to be? It was nice to finally have one certainty: that she'd being figuring out the answers with Jacob. Liz smiled and closed her eyes. That was a thought to dream on.

 **I've debated many times about how I wanted to wrap up** **The Recruit** **and I've decided this is it. When it comes to Tom(or in this case Jacob) and Liz there is no real end to their adventures together. As such finding a good place to end their story is always tricky. I choose to look to one of my favorite love song lyrics ever, "In the end I want to be standing out of the beginning with you." A new beginning is where I wanted to stop and so here we are. I hope you enjoyed the ride!**


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